In the first week of April, chief selector Ajit Agarkar and a powerful administrator running Indian cricket received Virat Kohli’s message that he wanted to retire from Tests while continuing to feature in ODIs. The desire to spend more time with his family was a key factor in his decision-making.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) wasn’t ready for such a decision, especially with the five-Test England tour on the horizon. The board and Agarkar, therefore, asked Kohli not to take any decision in haste and give the matter some more thought. However, the star batsman seemed to have made up his mind and the bigwigs at the BCCI had understood that they couldn’t prevent India’s most prolific player from hanging up his bat.
It was on May 7 that Kohli reached out to the BCCI big bosses again as he wanted to announce his retirement on social media. However, he was again advised to wait for a few days before making his statement public, as Operation Sindoor and the military conflict with Pakistan were in full swing.
Post the ceasefire, Kohli informed the BCCI bosses and selectors that he was making his decision public and on Monday, announced his retirement from Test cricket.
The call to walk away from the longest format of the game might come as a surprise to some, but it seems the ace batsman wants to spend more time with his family.
Kohli missed last year’s home Test series against England for the birth of his second child. He flew to England before the South Africa tour in December 2023 for a medical emergency. In fact, whenever he got some spare time, Kohli flew to England to be with the family.
After India won the 2024 ICC T20 World Cup, Kohli arrived on a special flight from the Caribbean, was part of the celebratory bus ride in , before flying to England the same night.
After India’s 1-3 Test series defeat in Australia, a BCCI directive curtailed the family time of players on longer tours to no longer than 14 days, a decision that didn’t sit well with the former India captain.
“The role of family is very difficult to explain to people… how grounding it is to just come back to your family every time you have something which is intense, which happens on the outside,” Kohli had said during ’s Innovation Lab summit.
“I don’t think people have an understanding of what value it brings.” Kohli said, adding that having the family around helps a player recover from on-field disappointments quicker.
“I don’t want to go to my room and just sit alone and sulk. I want to be able to be normal. Then you can really treat your game as something that is a responsibility. Not in a vague sense, but in a very real way that you finish your commitment and then you come back to your house, you’re with family and absolute normalcy in your house, and normal family life goes on.
“So, for me, that is absolutely a day of immense pleasure. I won’t miss any opportunities to go out and spend time with my family whenever I can,” Kohli had said.
“I feel quite disappointed about that because it’s like people who have no control over what’s going on are brought into conversations and put out at the forefront of that — ‘oh, maybe they need to be kept away’”.
