Former India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar's recent expression of disappointment over Virat Kohli's retirement from Test cricket has stirred memories of a pointed comment he made over a decade ago, when the batting maestro's place in the team was hanging by a thread.
Manjrekar's Current Disappointment and Past Critique
Taking to Instagram, Manjrekar stated that Kohli's decision to step away from the longest format left him feeling sad. This emotion was amplified, he said, when watching Virat's contemporaries like England's Joe Root, Australia's Steve Smith, and New Zealand's Kane Williamson continue to build their legacies in Test cricket.
Manjrekar emphasized that despite Kohli's recent struggles to regain his peak form, the former captain possessed the fitness and the hunger to mount a comeback. He felt Kohli could have explored more avenues before making the final call to retire. "I just feel sad that people like Joe Root and Steve Smith, Kane Williamson are really making a name for themselves in Test Cricket," Manjrekar said. He added that Kohli's choice to continue playing white-ball cricket was particularly disappointing, calling the ODI format "the easiest format" for a top-order batter.
A Flashback to 2012: The 'Does Not Belong' Comment
This is not the first instance of Manjrekar publicly scrutinizing Kohli's red-ball career. The context dates back to India's challenging tour of Australia in 2011-12. After a heavy innings defeat in the Sydney Test in January 2012, where Kohli scored 23 and 9, intense scrutiny fell on his spot in the playing XI.
At that critical juncture, Manjrekar took to social media platform X (formerly Twitter) with a stark suggestion. He wrote, "I would still drop VVS [Laxman] & get Rohit [Sharma] in for next Test. Makes long term sense. Give Virat one more test just to be sure he does not belong here."
Kohli's Defiant Response and Career-Defining Century
Despite the external noise, the team management retained Kohli for the third Test at the WACA in Perth. India was bowled out for under 200 in both innings, but a determined Kohli emerged as the top-scorer in each, making 44 and a resilient 75. His performance stood out in a batting lineup where only Rahul Dravid managed to cross 14 runs.
Addressing the pre-match criticism in a press conference afterward, Kohli had simply said, "I don't know why people were even after me after the first game." He let his bat do the talking in the very next match in Adelaide. There, Kohli scored his maiden Test century—a gritty 116—once again top-scoring and shepherding the tail. That innings marked the beginning of an illustrious journey, becoming the first of his 30 Test hundreds, placing him fourth on India's all-time list.
Kohli's Test career, which began with modest scores of 4, 15, and 0 on his debut tour of the West Indies and faced several early challenges, was ultimately defined by his fierce resilience. Manjrekar's recent remarks have now bookended the narrative of a career that spectacularly proved its initial doubters wrong, making his latest expression of sadness a poignant footnote to Kohli's Test legacy.
