Even as the cricketing world was yet to come to terms with Monday’s bombshell dropped by one of the greatest Test players ever, the finest tribute has come from the game’s governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC), which, in a poignantly touching tribute to the extraordinary player, who defied several odds to script a fairy tale run in the middle, summed it up best. In an official Instagram message, the ICC said, “Whites off, crown intact, Virat Kohli bids goodbye to Test cricket, leaving behind an unmatched legacy.”

Indeed, in his retirement, Kohli leaves behind an envious record in the game’s longest, and certainly the purest, format. The fabulously gifted cricketer brought the curtains down on a 14-year career that included 123 Tests, of which 68 were as Team India captain, scoring 9230 runs (46.85). In addition to 30 gloriously struck centuries, he scored 31 fifties with an unbeaten 254 as his highest individual score. The run machine may be fourth behind Sachin Tendulkar (51), Rahul Dravid (36) and Sunil Gavaskar (34) in terms of centuries scored by an Indian but beats them to the post as the only Indian to have seven Test double hundreds to his credit.

As an inspirational captain, who led from the front, he has a remarkable record of 40 wins, 11 draws and 17 losses for a win percentage of 58.82, which places him only behind Graeme Smith (53 wins), Ricky Ponting (48 wins), and Steve Waugh (41 wins) among the most successful Test captains. The towering statistics, notwithstanding, what makes Kohli a class apart is that he has lived up to his potential, barring the odd bad phase that every great sportsperson goes through, during a magnificent career that has inspired a generation of cricketers.

He burst onto the international scene as a prodigiously gifted young player with loads of leadership qualities when he anchored India to the 2008 U-19 World Cup in Malaysia. It is quite ironic that he made his ODI debut the same year (August 18, against Sri Lanka in Dambulla) but had to wait for three years to earn the Test cap and white flannels, which he accomplished against the West Indies in 2011. Three years into Tests, he was the captain of Team India at Adelaide, following the shocking retirement of Mahendra Singh Dhoni in 2014.

Among his achievements will be that he adeptly marshalled the resources on hand to help India retain the ICC Test Championship mace and piloting India to its first-ever Test series victory in Australia in 2018-2019, which marked the end of a 71-year jinx that haunted India Down Under. Unable to sustain the winning tempo for long, he gave up Test captaincy in 2021-22 after a series debacle in South Africa.

Incidentally, the 2024-25 tour of Australia marks the end of his Test career. While on records, with the retirement of Ravichandran Ashwin, Rohit Sharma and Kohli, in quick succession, Indian cricket finds itself in a situation that Australia was caught in when three of its all-time greats-Greg Chappell, Dennis Lille and Rod Marsh-quit simultaneously.

A great hallmark of King Kohli has been that endowed with top-grade qualities and staying prowess, he scaled the pinnacle with patented brilliance that not only catapulted India but the media was compelled to use ‘Virattled’ whenever he came up with a scintillating knock. His farewell message “I’ll always look back at my Test career with a smile”#269 was a typical signing-off by the living legend.