Kohli-Rohit Test retirements set up daunting English challenge for inexperienced Indian batting unit

The Hindu

13-05-2025

With batting mainstays Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma retiring from Test cricket in the span of a week, India will be scrambling for resources as a five-match series in England, which kickstarts the 2025-27 World Test Championship (WTC) cycle, looms.
The new Test skipper, who will take over from Rohit, will have to tide over the challenges of fielding an inexperienced batting lineup in tough conditions, even as the team hopes to paper over the recent rut in Tests, which led to India failing to qualify for the WTC 2025 final.
Though both Rohit and Kohli were a mere shadow of their best selves during India's defeat to the Kiwis at home and the subsequent Border-Gavaskar Trophy Down Under, they still lent the team a sense of comfort and stability.
Heading into the upcoming tour of England—where India hasn't triumphed since 2007 but came close in 2021-22, drawing the COVID-ravaged series 2-2—a crop of youngsters will be all at sea.
In the potential top seven, KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant are the only ones acquainted somewhat with the British climes, having played nine Tests each in the country. They were also India's second and third best batters during the 2021-22 tour, averaging 39.37 and 38.77, respectively. However, they had the cushion of Rohit, Kohli, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane back then. This time, they will have to lead the charge.
Shubman Gill, a potential captaincy candidate, is the only other batter with some experience of having batted in England, but a three-match stint is hardly enough to tap into. Four of India's possible top seven, with no experience of playing Tests in England, will be thrown at the deep end. Moreover, the four candidates—Sarfaraz Khan, Devdutt Padikkal, Rajat Patidar, Sai Sudharsan—primed to fill the vacuum left by Rohit and Kohli have yet to prove themselves in the longest format, and England isn't an ideal test site.
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The tour of England in 2014 was a case in point. India's first Test series in England without Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman meant Pujara, Kohli and Rahane had to shoulder the duties of an undercooked middle-order. While Rahane managed an average in excess of 33 across five matches, Pujara and Kohli had a tough initiation, averaging 22.20 and 13.40, respectively, as India suffered a 3-1 defeat, losing two of those games inside three days.
At the crossroads
The Indian management has made no secret of its intentions of moving on from the past and investing in the future. Rohit and Kohli were perhaps the last vestiges of the previous era, and with them gone, the management is unlikely to turn to old horses.
Pujara and Rahane have kept the rust off them by consistently doing the hard yards in domestic cricket, and with three tours of England (2014-2021) under their belt, they could smooth the transition. But with a new WTC cycle beginning and two of its most celebrated players calling it a day, India is probably not contemplating stop-gap measures but an overhaul.
Nitish Kumar Reddy during the Fifth Men's Test Match in the series between Australia and India. | Photo Credit:That Yashasvi Jaiswal and Nitish Kumar Reddy were India's most successful batters in the 2024-25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy probably feeds into the belief that experience is sometimes overrated. Perhaps the 3-0 drubbing against New Zealand at home, during which India was out-spun, was further proof of age getting the better of a well-honed skill. Hopefully for India, the tour of England next month will be an affirmation of the next generation rather than a negation of the past.