Key Points

On Monday, Kohli announced his retirement from Test cricket, ending a career where he amassed 9,230 runs in 123 matches at an average of 46.85, hitting 30 hundreds and 31 fifties with his highest score being 254 not out. Kohli’s retirement came just days after Rohit Sharma announced he was quitting playing the longest format of the game.

“It's massive in the context of not just Indian cricket, but in the context of Test cricket as a format itself. In today's day and age, we all know the most watched format is definitely the T20s. In many ways, Virat Kohli was the front runner in how Test cricket needs to be played and how much it needs to be valued.”

“We're losing someone at a very important point in the whole cricketing ecosystem because it is in a bit of a conundrum where Test cricket stands and Virat Kohli was one of the most important pivots in the last decade or so who played Test cricket in a certain way also made people enjoy watching Test cricket.”

“Now, losing someone like him from an Indian Test team point of view is very hard. But most importantly in the broader context of cricket itself, it's a massive loss not seeing him anywhere playing in the whites,” said Karthik to Sky Sports on Monday.

Kohli was also India’s most successful Test captain with 40 wins and 17 losses coming in the 68 matches he led the team, before leaving the top job in 2022. Asked if he was one of the greatest players to have represented India in Tests, Karthik stated, “Without a shadow of a doubt. We've had some legends over the game. The Gavaskars, the Tendulkars, and Virat Kohli are right up there with some of those names - Rahul Dravid and all of them.”

“But more than what he did with the back, I think it was how he captained Team India. The kind of fear he was able to inflict on the opposition. But most importantly for the game of cricket, the intensity with which he played across five days - that was the most admirable part.”

Karthik, currently the batting coach of Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), the side Kohli plays for in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025, feels it is going to be an uphill task for someone to replace the talismanic batter in the Test team, especially with India set to tour England for a five-match series starting on June 20.

“That's a very tough question to answer because I see no one at this point in time who can even come close to replacing him because what he's achieved in the last decade and a half is very hard to do so right now. With the way the game is moving, I feel a lot of people are giving importance to T20 cricket.”

“But he has been a phenomenal player because he liked Test cricket the most, and he felt that it should be the most valued format, and the amount of work he put in towards that was so much, and that's how the results came through as well.”

“The pictures that you're showing were such an important one for him because he had failed in England, and then he conquered the challenge when he came around the second time. A lot of these young boys will have those challenges, but the amount of time that they want to spend in terms of how they practice and how they improve their technique is going to be the big one,” he elaborated.

Karthik signed off by saying he would have Kohli at number one in the Fab Four list comprising Steve Smith, Kane Williamson, and Joe Root. “Look, I'm going to be very biased and say Virat Kohli is number one purely because of what he's done for India and the world of sport.”

“But as I said, if there's one thing that man has definitely done, it is to show the world how Test wicket needs to be played - the intensity across five days, the fitness required to do that, and that is what makes that man special.”

- IANS