Root and Kohli were considered part of the Fab Four modern batters
England batting great Joe Root felt that the absence of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli in the Test whites leaves cricket poorer as he hailed the duo for their contributions to the longest format.
Kohli, who has been dubbed as part of the Fab Four of Test cricket alongside Root, Kane Williamson and Steve Smith, retired after playing 123 Tests and scoring 9,230 runs. Root and Smith have already crossed the magical 10,000 run mark while Williamson is 724 runs away from the milestone.
Rohit called time on his red-ball career after a serious slump in form that saw him sidelined for the fifth and final Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Sydney when he was captain of the squad.
The BCCI selectors have picked 25-year-old Shubman Gill as Rohit’s successor, who will lead the team in England in the five-match Test series starting on Friday.
Root said that he had never considered Kohli as a competitor for records and expressed his admiration for the star batter.
“I’ve never been in competition with Virat. He is someone I’ve always admired, and thought, ‘Wow, what a player’. I’ll miss those battles we had on the field, but it provides opportunities for other players to try and put their mark on Test cricket,” Root said in a press conference.
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“Cricket is poorer without them being around. They are two Indian legends. They’ve done amazing things for Indian cricket for such a long period of time. It’ll be a slightly different look to the series, but we still expect it to be highly competitive,” he added about Rohit and Kohli’s retirement.
Despite England not reaching the World Test Championship 2023-25 final at Lord’s, Root has had a great cycle, having scored seven hundred from 44 innings at an average of 54 and is three more hundreds away from overtaking Sri Lankan legend Kumar Sangakkara’s tally of 38 Test centuries.
When asked how he looks at how new players settle down in Test cricket, Root didn’t have a straightforward answer. He took the example of England’s new white-ball captain Harry Brook and young India opener Yashasvi Jaiswal who have looked tailored for the long format while someone like Australia’s Michael Hussey took over a decade of domestic grind before making it big in international cricket.
“It’s not straightforward. It might be that someone like (Yashasvi) Jaiswal comes in and has an amazing series, like he did against the West Indies, and goes to Australia and scores a hundred. Everyone’s journey is unique, but some people just take that little bit longer,” he said.
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