Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma can shut BCCI's retirement rumours; go back to 2007 when Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly...

I have a request to make to Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma. Irrespective of your greatness, irrespective of all that you have achieved, irrespective of whether this is the last legs of your careers, please… DO NOT GIVE UP. Do not let someone else dictate how the ending of your storied careers is going to be. You are bigger and deserve better than that. Fine, you went out of T20Is, thinking it's time. You left Test cricket even though the England series was right around the corner. But just six months after you helped India lift the Champions Trophy, there is no way the Australia series should be your swansong. Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma must do what Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar did in 2007.(AFP Images)

The last 28 days have been boring in Indian cricket. Memes of fans yawning and eagerly waiting for the cricket team to return to action are aplenty on social media. Hence, naturally, reporters are in full swing, and who better to write about than Kohli and Rohit, whose careers stand at a fascinating crossroads. A report stating that the BCCI is planning to give a farewell to India cricket's iconic batting duo in Australia sent shockwaves through the fraternity. Adding to the buzz, whispers that Shubman Gill could soon replace Rohit as India's ODI captain have kept the 38-year-old in the headlines. Oddly enough, no such development emerged during the India vs England Test series.

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Which brings us to the question: Is it really true? Is Australia the place where Kohli and Rohit will bow out of international cricket, similar to Tests? A look at their numbers in recent ODIs proves the BCCI will only be shooting itself in the foot if the decision is made for them. Board officials, including acting president Rajeev Shukla, have repeatedly stated that the BCCI never tells a player when to retire. Yet, the chatter, particularly on social media, suggests a very different narrative. Kohli has been doing his thing inside the indoor net facility at Lord's, while Rohit's before and after pics, having undergone a remarkable transformation, and a stellar show in the Yo-Yo Test, are all that everyone needs to know about his ambitions. He is coming, fiercely determined for the 2027 World Cup in South Africa, unless something goes terribly, horribly wrong.

Only Virat Kohli, and Rohit Sharma hold the power the change the narrative

Only Kohli and Rohit can put these rumours to rest once and for all. And for that, they don't even need to dig too deep into history. About two decades ago, Indian cricket's greatest batting duo faced a remarkably similar test. Hark your mind back to 2006–07, during the turbulent Greg Chappell era, when the team endured one of its most difficult phases. Sourav Ganguly had been unceremoniously shoved out, and there were whispers that Sachin Tendulkar might be next. Determined to dismantle the so-called 'superstar culture,' Chappell went after the two biggest icons Indian cricket had ever produced, Ganguly and Tendulkar. With Ganguly ousted, it seemed the door had closed on the Prince of Calcutta. But then came that iconic Pepsi commercial: "Hi! Mera naam Sourav Ganguly hai. Bhoole toh nahi?" A dejected-yet-defiant Ganguly struck a chord, one that spread like wildfire.

How Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar reversed the script

Still, public sympathy didn't alone bring Ganguly back into the team. He went to the gullies, played every domestic tournament that there was – Ranji Trophy, Duleep Trophy, Challenger Trophy, and eventually broke the door to make a comeback for the ages. In the last two years of his career, Ganguly lived the dream, hammering down 1991 runs from 25 Tests and 1120 runs from 30 ODI innings. That's more than 3000 runs at an average of more than 56. Ganguly is possibly the only Indian cricketer to have retired at the peak of his batting prowess, when he was playing better than ever.

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Tendulkar's was a slightly different case. While he was never shown the door, an indirect attempt was made when Chappell infamously asked him to captain the team at the 2007 World Cup, with less than six months left. The travesty that unfolded in the West Indies almost ended careers. The scars ran so deep that the great Tendulkar contemplated retirement – he was yet to turn 35 – when a call from his idol Viv Richards painted the bigger picture. "How would you feel lifting the World Cup in front of your home crowd?" were his exact words, and that spurred Sachin to enjoy a second wind in his career. In 2006, when runs were hard to come by, he was still figuring out a way to adjust his technique because of the dreaded tennis elbow, despite his power game getting compromised. Still, Tendulkar, in the second half of his 30s, for the first time since the early 2000s, batted with brutality. Out came the pull shots, the dance down the wicket for towering sixes. If there was ever a retirement noise lurking, Tendulkar shut it in style and realised his dream of winning the World Cup.

So what's stopping Virat and Rohit from going down the same path? Rohit's leaner, fitter, and sharper look already signals that he has no intention of slowing down. As for Kohli, fitness was never a concern, and now that he's only playing ODIs and the IPL, it wouldn't be either. The only thing standing in their way is match practice. After a six-month break, with 27 matches and then some lined up, Kohli and Rohit were, are and will be capable enough. They still are India's two best ODI batters. In his last 20 ODI innings, Kohli has pummelled 1013 runs at an average of 63.3, strike-rate of 90, with seven fifties and four hundreds. Rohit isn't too far behind either – 924 runs from the same number of innings, averaging 46.2 with a strike rate of 119.5 and six fifties, one hundred. They alone get to decide how they go out, when they go out.

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