The greatest Indian batter of his generation. If you had to define Virat Kohli’s Test career in one sentence, that one is it. It would also be a huge disservice to Kohli if you even try to sum up his career in one sentence. He retires with 9230 runs from 123 Tests at an average of 46.85.
For anyone who lived through his Test batting peak, it will be shocking that he hasn’t scaled the summit of 10,000 Test runs and his career average is less than 50. But Kohli chased wins above run tallies and averages.
He might not have achieved two big individual batting peaks, but he has something that he might treasure even more: the most wins (40) by an Indian captain in Test cricket, and 62 victories as a player – more than any Indian cricketer save Sachin Tendulkar.
Kohli brought a furious, intense, explosive energy to everything he did on a cricket field. And nowhere was it more apparent than in Test cricket. The game’s oldest format follows rhythms set over more than a century. But for a brief while, when Kohli donned the whites, he made the game move to his pace. It’s something only generation defining players can do.
Kohli embraced Test cricket with the fervour of teenage romance, but stuck to it like a rom-com’s happily ever after script. It was evident everytime he spoke of what Test cricket meant to him. It was evident in how he brought a searing passion and intensity to the game from the first session he played in 2008, to the last in 2025. It was evident in how he got spectators as involved in the action as he himself was.
It must be hard bidding goodbye to something you love so deeply. But perhaps Kohli knew it was time. The romance had run its course, but it has left us with indelible memories.
‘For 60 overs, they should feel hell’
It might be Kohli’s most remembered quote on the field. It is apt too, because it encapsulated Kohli like nothing else. India and England had fought through to the last two sessions of a tense Test. There was needle. There was the opportunity to create history. And there was Virat Kohli as captain. It is an irresistible combination, and it needed the immortal words that Kohli delivered.
It was also a distillation of the philosophy Kohli brought as captain in whites. The opposition should be made to feel like they’re in hell. There would be nothing given easily. From the very first time he captained India, he set the tone on a December morning in Adelaide in 2014, when he carried the team along with him in trying to hunt down 360 on the final day. It was simply not conceivable before Kohli. With him in the middle, it almost felt inevitable.
The batting great
Kohli’s lowest point as a batter was the England tour of 2014. It tells you everything about the man and the competitor, that he spent the next several years compiling a record that few could match in the history of the game.
In 55 Tests from October 2014 to December 2019, Kohli plundered 5347 runs, averaging 63.65. He did it across venues, across countries, across continents. And all that while, he was also the best ODI batter in the world and had won two Player of the Tournament awards in T20 World Cups. It is a peak that quite simply, may never be matched in cricket.
At that stage, Kohli looked like he would conquer every batting record there was, and invent a few of his own. That he didn’t is as much a tribute to Test cricket as anything. You cannot take anything for granted in the longest format. It’s a truth Kohli understood better than most, which is why he was relentless in his pursuit of excellence.
There will be others who follow, who might scale even greater peaks. But it will be tough for cricket to find someone who loved Test cricket as Virat Kohli did. He left the game in better health than he found it, a fitting end for any romance.
