Virat Kohli in action© BCCI
All the cricket fans around the world were left heartbroken after star India batter Virat Kohli announced his retirement from Test cricket. The 36-year-old batter, who made his Test debut in 2011, called time on his career after playing 123 matches and scoring 9,230 runs. Throughout his career in whites, Kohli made runs everywhere and dominated a variety of conditions, regions, and bowlers. He plundered runs everywhere, and for the players overseas, he emerged as a bullish, relentless, and dominant force unprecedented in world cricket.
As the entire nation is currently dealing with the news of Kohli's departure, former India opener Aakash Chopra gave an interesting insight on what would have led him to take such a decision.
"He played Test cricket with the intensity of T20s. He ran a marathon at the speed of a sprint and kept running, and that is absolutely insane. As a batter, you can put all your effort into fielding, but he used to run all over the ground, celebrate every wicket, lift someone, or make someone fall," Chopra said on his YouTube channel.
"If not, he was messing with the crowd and driving them. This is mad intensity. It's one of its kind. We won't get to see such intensity again, nor did we find it before him. I remember VVS Laxman saying that Virat has many good things, but he fears that intensity might burn out. So maybe it was a mental burnout, that he cannot do this for five days anymore," he added.
Chopra went on to state that no other player can ever replace Kohli and called him a "three-format master".
"There will never be another player like Virat Kohli. He is a three-format master. Where do you get three-format masters now?" said Kohli.
"If you see the Fab Four, none of them is playing all three formats well. If you see the upcoming generation, you see that someone is good in one format, but not in the other," he added.
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