For all Virat Kohli has done for Team India in Test cricket, he deserved a proper farewell. However, this is not unprecedented—Rahul Dravid didn’t get one either. He too played his last Test in Australia, with an England tour being the next assignment. The fact that Rohit Sharma gets clubbed with Kohli is an achievement in itself.
Kohli scored 12 of his 30 Test hundreds in the SENA (South Africa, England, New Zealand, Australia) nations. Only Sachin Tendulkar scored more, 17. Rohit, for comparison, scored 12 Test centuries in his entire career. And only one in SENA. However, he was still India’s Test captain and one of the best batters from 2019 onwards.
Rohit Sharma & Virat Kohli hard done by
But Indian cricket has often worked like this. Lesser names like Ashish Nehra were lucky enough to bid goodbye on their own terms, while Dravid and VVS Laxman weren’t. The case happened with Rohit and Kohli in Test cricket. Their India teammate Ravi Bishnoi thinks there should have been a proper send-off for them, given what they had done.
“It is actually shocking, because you always want to see them retire from the field. For such big legends, you want them to leave while still being on the field; that looks much better. And what both of them have done for India, in my view, there is no one even close,” Bishnoi said on the Game Changers podcast.
Bishnoi realises that it may still happen. The modern greats haven’t yet retired from ODI cricket. And the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) might just roll out the carpet for them when the time comes. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have been celebrated before signing off from Test cricket.
“You want them to get a good farewell, but maybe they will get that in ODIs as well, whenever they leave, whenever they want to. Because no one can tell you when you will retire. But it was shocking when both of them retired, because suddenly you feel like two spots have become empty, who will come and fulfill that?” he added.
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