![\"Virat](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/ViratKohli_1790684633772_KA6B_1790684642905_EOyE_0476a829-1071-4418-8fca-11b18f67f053_GxAc.jpg\" "\\"Virat")
Virat Kohli in Test cricket. (X Images)<\/p>\nThink about Virat Kohli\u2019s final months as a Test cricketer for a moment. The runs had dried up; Australia had exposed the same weakness repeatedly during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, and although there was that magnificent hundred in Perth, precious little followed. By May 2025, Kohli had decided that 123 Tests were enough and walked away from the format he had spent years championing.<\/p>\n
Virat Kohli in Test cricket. (X Images)<\/p>\n
Straightforward decline followed by retirement? Mohammad Kaif is not convinced. There is another possibility, he believes: perhaps Kohli did not merely feel that his batting had reached a crossroads, but also that the people around him were no longer quite as convinced about Virat Kohli as Virat Kohli remained about himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I look at his interviews about this, I feel like there is some disappointment on his face. Even if his form was bad, you are talking about Virat Kohli,\u201d Kaif said on a YouTube channel. He then went considerably further while explaining why he felt Kohli\u2019s Test exit may have been shaped by more than just declining runs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seemed that he felt like he was not getting importance and backing, and the people within had no faith in him. I still think if he would have continued, he would have definitely made a comeback. He is known for comebacks,\u201d Kaif added. It is an important distinction. Kaif is not claiming first-hand knowledge of what happened inside the Indian dressing room, and Kohli himself has not publicly attributed his Test retirement to a lack of support. This is Kaif\u2019s reading of Kohli\u2019s demeanour and the circumstances surrounding one of Indian cricket\u2019s most significant recent retirements.<\/p>\n
Kaif points to Kohli\u2019s ODI resurgence<\/p>\n
And if you are wondering why Kaif remains so certain Kohli <\/a>could have hauled himself out of his Test slump, his argument rests heavily on what happened afterwards. Kohli endured consecutive ducks during India\u2019s ODI series in Australia in 2025, inviting another wave of questions about whether his best years were behind him. \u201cIf he had been removed after those two ducks in Australia, would we have been able to praise him or look at such knocks from him now?\u201d Kaif said. His point was simple: established greats, in his view, occasionally deserve a different degree of patience because their history suggests they can recover from stretches that would overwhelm less proven players.<\/p>\n \u201cI can understand if it is a new player. But this is Virat Kohli. You cannot apply the same things to him as you do to others. Your form will go bad. No one is a machine or this is not a video game,\u201d he added. Kohli\u2019s subsequent ODI performances have strengthened that argument. He has continued accumulating runs and centuries, including an unbeaten 139 in the opening ODI of the ongoing series against the West Indies, while registering four hundreds and five fifties across his last 11 ODI innings.<\/p>\n Also Read: Nitish Kumar Reddy better off not taking the Hardik Pandya route; red-ball bowling key to long-term success<\/a><\/p>\n For Kaif<\/a>, Kohli\u2019s value now extends beyond individual numbers. With Shubman Gill<\/a> still relatively new to leadership, he believes the presence of an experienced figure such as Kohli remains especially valuable, particularly when India are already operating without the same depth of seniority across other departments. \u201cHe is fit and scoring runs. This will benefit Gill, who is a young captain. Look at the bowling; Gill is facing a tough time there due to the lack of senior players. The longer Kohli stays, the better it will be for Gill as a captain and for India overall that way,\u201d Kaif said.<\/p>\n That ultimately forms the heart of Kaif\u2019s argument. Careers can appear to be approaching their conclusion remarkably quickly when form disappears, but when Kohli, he believes the evidence of repeated reinvention should make anyone wary of writing the final chapter too early.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Think about Virat Kohli\u2019s final months as a Test cricketer for a moment. The runs had dried up;…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":909894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,219472,477933,1793,85,477932,2131,48288],"class_list":["post-909893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-mohammad-kaif","tag-odi-performances","tag-retirement","tag-sports","tag-test-cricketer","tag-virat-kohli","tag-virat-kohli-test-retirement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}