Virat Kohli has retired from Test cricket, truly marking the end of an era. Sarah Waris pays tribute.
It’s been nearly 30 minutes. It could very well be 60. There’s a blank canvas, a deadline awaiting, but no words. Just a hollowness that clings stubbornly, refusing to leave. The hands move to type, but the mind is lost in moments, stitched across a decade and more. A numbness on a Monday morning, the very week you decided to eat healthy and exercise more. That’s now postponed to next week, thank you very much.
Virat Kohli has retired from Test cricket. It’s over. A chapter that shaped our love for Test cricket, taking us on countless rides, has ended.
I read his retirement post for the 269th time, having memorised it word for word, just like I would cram history and political science before any examination. While that got me the near-perfect score, this requires deeper comprehension, understanding and acceptance. Because it was never just cricket when Kohli played. It was a theatre. It was defiance and discipline, chaos and control, all packed into one relentless force who refused to be anything but himself.
For those of us who started watching cricket with him at the crease, the bond went deeper. As life moved us through the chaos of adolescence, college corridors, and the grind of workdays, he remained a constant, the one big reason we kept coming back to the game.
He wasn’t the perfect Test batter. That was never the allure. He was human in the most honest sense, flawed, fiery, occasionally infuriating, but always magnetic. His career was a map of highs and heartbreaks, its own story.Those who questioned him in 2012 dished out tributes for him today. His first Test dismissal, in 2011, came from chasing a fifth-stump ball, the same line that painfully defined his last series. The wreckage of 2014 in England, and the rage of a comeback in 2018. The five hundreds he hit that year alone and the five he hit in the next six combined. The sudden resignation from captaincy that no one saw coming. On his last day as a Test cricketer, he stepped in as stand-in skipper, in the same country where it truly began for him. A near-unblemished record in India, only for it to end with a series whitewash in his last at home.
The records will say he walks away without 10,000 runs, a vow he had made to himself all those years ago. An average of 46.85 should have been higher; the 30 tons falls below what he could have achieved. But numbers will end there. They won’t speak of the assurance he brought when India were in early trouble, or the deep-seated frustration when he was dismissed. They can’t reflect the astonishment of watching him dance down the track on dustbowls, or the disbelief when he ran threes on 232 in the searing heat of Pune.
Or of Adelaide 2014, where in his first Test as captain, chasing 364, he chose bravery over security. He fell trying, but made a promise that his India would never again play to survive.
He kept that promise. As a leader, he redefined the very soul of India’s Test team. He didn’t just back pace bowlers; he nurtured a culture around them. He placed fitness above reputation, winning above averages. Having taken over the side when they were ranked No.7, Kohli led them to the top, guiding them to seven wins in SENA countries, the most by any India captain. Under him, Test cricket felt like it was reviving and thriving.
But all that is part of the legacy we all know. A quick Google search will bury you in accolades and accomplishments. Kohli’s contribution went beyond, into something more intangible. That feeling he evoked.
He was polarising. His aggression unsettled many. The stares, the screams, the mid-pitch roars. For others, it was raw and unapologetic in a world too often sanitised. He celebrated wickets louder than the bowlers, lived every delivery like it would shape history, and gave fans a reason to believe that this game, this format, still mattered.
But then, the runs stopped coming. Slowly at first, and then all at once. The dip, once thought temporary, became a stretch. In Australia, the dismissals became eerily similar - drives edged behind, feet half-committed. The conviction waned. From an avalanche, his runs became a trickle. There were periods of brilliance, especially away from home, but they were too far and few in between. Amid all this, the fans clung on, because with him, there was always hope. One session. One partnership. One glance through midwicket would turn it around.
It never quite did, and that’s the ache of it all.
Shah Rukh Khan, the great Indian actor, once called himself the last of the stars. Kohli’s departure feels like that for Indian Test cricket. Who else can make half the city queue up at 4am for a Ranji game? Who else can divert an Indian military press briefing, hours after a ceasefire with Pakistan, to mention his retirement? Who would be the global face of cricket when the Olympics begin in LA three years later? Whose animated face will the broadcasters track to turn into posters? Who will make fans rush to buy tickets, just to catch a glimpse?
Life, of course, will go on. But the shadow of #269 will linger. In every slip catch taken without his deafening scream, in every wicket celebrated without his instinctive sprint and leap. When the squad for England is announced and he’s not to be found, when the second Indian wicket falls at Lord’s, and the next batter, with a popped collar, strolls on. When the crowd is heckling the fielding side, and there’s no Virat bhaiyya to flip them a finger, blow them a trumpet, smirk, or stare them down. When there’s a quiet moment, when the fire is missing, that's when you will notice he isn’t around.
And now that I have managed to get some words scribbled down, I find myself staring again. At the screen. At memories. At a game that suddenly feels colder. The tears came eventually after an imaginary guard of honour that he so richly deserved. But maybe this is how it was meant to be: sudden and silent, in far contrast to the passion and noise that defined his career.
Thank you, Virat. It was an honour watching and celebrating you.
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