After Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli exit: The year Indian cricket changed forever

Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli were the pillars of Indian cricket over the last decade, and cricket in the country witnessed a tectonic shift in 2025 when they both retired from Tests, leaving the transition team in deep trouble. 

A downhill path that the two-time World Test Championship finalists were unaccustomed to. The early signs of the Indian team’s new direction were visible towards the second half of 2024 when the two stalwarts retired from the Twenty20 format, following the World Cup triumph in Barbados.

However, it was during the tour Down Under that the team’s fortunes fell below par, and the sequence of events gave a forewarning of the impending disaster that could leave a trail of devastation for years to come.

After winning the first Test in Perth, the Men in Blue were flying high. But Australia regrouped in time to decimate India. Even skipper Rohit, who took over the reins after arriving late following the birth of his son, could not stop the hosts’ ruthless march.

During the series, veteran all-rounder Ravichandran Ashwin announced his retirement at the end of the third Test in Brisbane and returned home. His move earned mixed responses from the game’s greats, including Kapil Dev.

While a Test loss is part and parcel of a tour of Australia, the knee-jerk reaction by the team management sent a strong message that skipper Rohit Sharma, who had a lean period in red-ball cricket, had his back to the wall.

The talented batter pushed himself down to the middle order, a position he had been in during the early stages of his career, and even worse was his decision to stand down and drop himself for the final Test in Sydney. While he was confident of coming back into the Test team, the
Hitman fans didn’t see their star don the whites again.

However, after winning the Champions Trophy in Dubai, Rohit Sharma, however, hinted that he is not retiring from One-Day Internationals, leaving a question mark over his Test future.

While it is understandable that Rohit had a lean run in Test cricket, he called it quits from red-ball cricket, but Kohli surprised the cricketing world by following in the footsteps of Rohit to end his Test career before India’s tour of England – a format that was dear to the Delhi batter.

The 37-year-old, who still had many years of Test cricket ahead of him after being fitter than many of the youngsters, became a victim of his own high standards. Kohli was scoring centuries at will and maintained an average of over 50 for four consecutive years from 2016 to 2019. 

But the COVID break turned things around, and his average dropped down to the 20s for two years and then again surged to 55 in 2023. But the growing scrutiny over his performance must have made him take the decision, despite a match-winning century in Perth, only four Tests prior.

The lack of experience showed in England and India frittered away dominating positions in key sessions and ended the series 2-2 when they should have won at least 3-1. 

The key protagonist of that series is the skipper Shubman Gill, who is given the task of leading the new order. Filling in at the crucial No. 4 spot that Sachin Tendulkar and Kohli previously held for over the past four decades, Gill scored a massive 754 runs in the five Tests. However, South Africa exposed the lack of experience in the Indian ranks, beating the Men in Blue 2-0 to end a 25-year wait.

The second home loss leaves a big question mark over the future of Indian Test cricket after a 3-0 thrashing last year at the hands of New Zealand.

The loss against South Africa could be attributed to the team in transition, but barring a few, most of the team have proven match-winners. So it clearly proves how important Rohit and Kohli were for the team’s fortunes over the decade. India even missed the guile of Ashwin, who could spin a web on helpful home conditions.

With the World Test Championship future at stake, India will have to regroup and find the right replacements, but for now, it is a huge void that is hard to fill, and 2025 will mark a turning point in Indian cricket.