After the Indian team’s defeat at Lord’s, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli are once again in the news. Some former cricketers including Madan Lal have asked Kohli to withdraw his retirement decision. In several media reports, Rohit and Virat were suspected to be under pressure from the board and team management to retire from Test cricket after the Australia tour. However, now Board Deputy Chairman Rajiv Shukla has clarified that it was nothing like that. He said that the decision to retire from Test was completely taken by Rohit and Kohli and there was no pressure on them from the board to interfere.

Earlier this year, India had to face a 4-1 defeat against Australia in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Since then, discussions regarding his retirement began. BCCI’s interference was also discussed. It was also being speculated that BCCI was in favor of bringing youngsters into the Test team and the board might have asked its experienced players to retire. However, Shukla had rejected these claims and said that the decision to take retirement is the players’ own. Shukla said that BCCI respects the contribution of both Kohli and Rohit to Indian cricket, but does not influence either player’s decision to retire from any format. He clearly said that the board will always feel the loss of the two stalwarts in the longer format but continues to celebrate their presence in the ODI setup.

Shukla said, ‘I want to clarify some things. We all are feeling the absence of Rohit and Virat, but they themselves decided to retire from Tests. BCCI has a policy that it never tells any player when and from which format to retire. That depends on the player. It was his own decision. He retired on his own. We will always feel his loss. We consider him a great batsman. The good thing is that he is available in ODI.