Kohli had featured in one Ranji Trophy match for Delhi in the 2024-25 season
Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma might have returned to domestic cricket with their respective teams after many years out of compulsion by the new BCCI guidelines, but Cheteshwar Pujara feels it is highly unlikely to happen before the Test tour of England in June.
Pujara felt that despite the workload of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and the allure of big money makes sense for cricketers to put the league above red-ball cricket.
Kohli and Rohit have the opportunity to play red-ball cricket in England’s County Championship 2025, but with the schedule clashing with the IPL 2025, there was no sign of it. England’s top division competition is set to pause for a month just before the IPL final on May 25.
“With the kind of money IPL has to offer, I do not blame them. The choice and inclination is very obvious when 8-9 crores in IPL for two months is compared with 3-4 crores [for a year] in Test cricket,” Pujara told in a chat with Revsportz.
Pujara, who has been overlooked by the national selectors and the IPL franchises, had previously played for Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Sussex over the past few years.
Even though both Kohli and Rohit have gained form in white-ball cricket with assured knocks in the victorious Champions Trophy 2025 campaign, their red-ball form is still a point of concern for the team before the England Tests.
Rohit was dropped from the final and fifth Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Australia after a string of single-digit scores while Kohli managed just 191 runs from 10 innings.
Following the defeat, the BCCI had mandated all the players have domestic cricket matches under their belt in order to be eligible for national team selection and central contracts.
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Kohli managed six runs in his return to Delhi’s Ranji team against Railways, while Rohit was dismissed on 3 and 25 against Jammu and Kashmir in the one match he played for Mumbai.
“It will help the players of the Test squad to be in touch with the game. But one who is playing all three formats would also need to balance it out and find a break in between. So, I don’t know how much domestic cricket players like Virat and Rohit want to play. It’s up to them, but for young players, I genuinely feel domestic cricket would help them in the future when playing Test format,” Pujara said.
India will travel to England for a five-match Test series set to be played from June 22 to August 4.
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