CHENNAI: Virat Kohli, India's most successful Test captain, announced his retirement from the format on Monday. The 36-year-old Kohli played 123 Tests for India, scoring 9230 runs with 30 hundreds and 31 half centuries at an average of 46.85. A look at highs and lows of his Test career that spanned over 14 years...
Highs
Kohli didn't start his Test career in a spectacular fashion but 1721 runs from the first 24 Tests at an average of 46.51 was pretty good.
He made a stunning century (116 off 213 balls) in Adelaide in 2012. He was the highest scorer for India on the tour with over 300 runs in four Tests. Legends like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Virender Sehwag struggled but not the Delhi batter.
Kohli's best years in Tests started with the Australia tour in 2014-15. During the tour, he scored 692 runs at an average of 86.50, including four hundreds. He also took over as a captain during the series.
From then till the end of the Bangladesh tour of India in 2019-20, he amassed 5347 runs in the longest format of the game at an average of 63.65. During this period, he hit 21 of his 30 centuries from just 90 innings.
He scored his first double-hundred in Tests against West Indies in North Sound in July 2016. By the end of 2017, he added five more to it in his next 33 innings. It was the second-most prolific run of 34 Test innings in terms of double-hundreds after Don Bradman's. In all, he scored seven double hundreds, most by a captain in Test cricket history.
In 2018, he made a return to England where he failed four years ago. India might have lost the series but Kohli emerged as the leading scorer with 593 runs from 10 innings at an average of 59.30 with two hundreds and three fifties.
In 2018, Kohli scored a century each at Centurion in South Africa, Edgbaston in England and Perth in Australia. India also won the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in the 2018-19 to create history under Kohli's captaincy. It was India's first Test series win Down Under.
While he is more remembered for his exploits in Australia, Kohli is also among the most prolific visiting batters in Tests in South Africa since its readmission. He scored 891 runs across four series at an average of 49.50 in the country.
It was Kohli who is credited for building a pace attack that could win challenging assignments away from home. Spinners had always been considered match winners for India but under Kohli, fast bowlers thrived. They took 591 wickets at an average of 26.00 and strike rate of 51.84 with Kohli their leader.
Lows
The series in England in 2014 saw him falling cheaply against the moving ball. The batter could score only 134 runs in 10 innings in the series. James Anderson, in particular, picked Kohli's wicket 4 times during the series. Kohli registered scores of 1, 8, 25, 0, 39, 28, 0, 7, 6 and 20 in the five Tests in England.
His form dipped in the beginning of 2020 as Kohli scored just over 2000 runs in 39 Test matches at a poor average of 30.72. In his last 10 Tests: Kohli managed just 382 runs in 19 innings at an average of 22.47.
At home against New Zealand when India were whitewashed 3-0 for the first time, Kohli's decline was evident. He made 70 in Bengaluru and could manage only 23 runs from the next four innings to finish with a below-par tally of 93 runs from three Tests.
His struggles continued during the five Test Border Gavaskar Trophy series in 2024-25. He managed just 190 runs in the series, at an average of 23, with the lone bright being the unbeaten century in the first Test in Perth. This series marked one of his worst batting performances in a series comprising three or more Tests.