'They were asked to go out': Former India cricketer Karsan Ghavri alleges BCCI for doing 'petty politics' on Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli's sudden Test retirement

Team India is currently in a transition phase, as veterans have recently announced their retirements. This phase began with Ravichandran Ashwin's Test retirement during the five-Test match series of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024-25 in Australia. After the series, senior batting duo Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli also called it a day from the longest format of the game in May before the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy 2025.

Rohit was the first to announce retirement, casually dropping an Instagram story to announce his departure from the Indian whites. Two days later, news broke that Kohli wrote to the BCCI that he wants to retire from Test cricket. And in the next 48 hours, he made it official through a post on Instagram. Kohli, Rohit. Also gone. Just like that. Their decision shocked everyone, and fans began speculating that they had been forced to leave the team.

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India's legendary left-arm pacer Karsan Ghavri who opened the bowling with Kapil Dev in the 1970s, has added fuel to the fire, openly claiming that while Kohli, Rohit wanted to continue playing Tests for India, the BCCI's 'politics', along with the selection panel led by its chairman Ajit Agarkar, eventually decided to shove the duo out of Test cricket.

"He [Kohli] should have definitely continued playing for India easily, probably for another couple of years. But something really forced him to retire. And unfortunately, when he retired, he was not even given a farewell by the BCCI. Such players, such a great player who has done such great service to BCCI, India cricket and Indian fans, should be given a grand and fabulous farewell," Ghavri, who played 39 Tests and 19 ODIs for India, said on the Vickey Lalwani Show.

Kohli ended his career as the fourth-highest run-getter for Tests in India, finishing with less than 10,000 runs in the format, a fact that is still tough to digest given his quality. During his 14-year-long career, Kohli is arguably the best captain to lead India in whites with 40 wins under his belt, including the first-ever series win in Australia during the 2018-19 Border-Gavaskar Trophy. There's no denying the fact that Kohli's Test form plummeted in the last five years, but it's hard to come to terms with the fact that he let go of the format he loves the most at the age of 36.

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Rohit's Test career never quite took off like Kohli's, but after being featured as an opener in September 2019, he enjoyed a second wind in his batting. Ghavri, 74, went on record to state that the decision-makers did not want to see Kohli and Rohit take any further part in Test cricket, and despite the duo's resistance, they were asked to leave.

"It's due to internal politics within the BCCI, which is hard to understand. And I think this is the reason he retired prematurely. Even Rohit Sharma retired prematurely. They were asked to go out. It's not like they wanted to leave. They wanted to continue. But the selectors and BCCI had different ideas. It was a matter of some kind of petty politics," added Ghavri.

Rohit and Virat's last international outing came in the ICC Champions Trophy 2025, where unbeaten India defeated New Zealand in the final to win the title at Dubai International Stadium in Dubai.