Barely a day after suffering a 2-1 series loss of South Africa, Virat Kohli dropped a bombshell as he stepped down as India’s Test captain after seven years.
"It's been 7 years of hard work, toil and relentless perseverance everyday to take the team in the right direction. I've done the job with absolute honesty and left nothing out there," Kohli tweeted on Saturday evening.
The pressure was certainly building on Kohli since his outburst in the pre-departure press conference ahead of the South Africa tour, where he said no BCCI official had asked him to reconsider his decision of stepping down as T20 captain. Despite his exploits in all formats of the game, Test cricket was extremely close to Kohli's heart and he played a major role in charting India's roadmap to the No.1 spot in ICC Test rankings.
The Indian team failed to win the World Test Championship in mid 2021 when they lost the final to New Zealand in Southampton, but the combine of Kohli and Ravi Shastri was a part of several high points in the five-day format which included back-to-back Test series wins in Australia and individual Test victories in England and South Africa.
Kohli had, on Friday, rued the team's batting failures in the 2-1 series loss to South Africa. He added that the team will continue to back the under-fire senior batters Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane despite their failures in the three-match series.
"The batting has let us down in the last two games. We needed to step up and there's no running away from that. Honestly, I can't sit here and talk about what will happen in the future. That's not for me to discuss. For that, you need to speak to selectors and ask what they have in mind because it's not my job. We have continued to back Cheteshwar and Ajinkya because of the kind of players they are," said Kohli in the post-match press conference.
