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Former India batter Manoj Tiwary added his voice to the chatter around Virat Kohli’s Test retirement, making a sensational claim in an interaction with InsideSport.
Kohli’s decision to step away from Test cricket has stayed a live topic because his his red-ball career shaped an era for India – as a run-scorer, as a captain, and as a defining personality of modern Test cricket, With contemporaries such as Joe Root and Steven Smith continuing to stack up big Test hundreds, the gap left by his exit is still being discussed whenever the format’s biggest performances grab attention.
A parallel strand of debate has also involved the way fans and commentators rank formats by difficulty, with Test often described as the toughest and ODIs sometimes labelled the easiest. In the interaction, Tiwary addressed that wider framing while speaking about Kohli’s retirement call.
When asked about the claims by Sanjay Manjrekar that Virat Kohli has retired from the hardest format of the game and is playing the easiest one, Tiwary said, “I don't agree with him. Usko majboor kiya tha. Mere observation se, meri jo soch hain, he was forced. An atmosphere was created as such that he has to goobye to Test cricket. Because he is not the one who would say on his own that he will play the main game. Yes, the decision has been taken by us from his tongue. But he is behind. Everyone knows what happened, so how can you say that you chose the easiest format just to make your runs. (He was forced. An atmosphere was created as such that he has to goobye to Test cricket. Everyone knows what happened behind the scenes. After knowing everything, how can you say that he left the hardest format and is playing the easiest one for his own runs.)
The comments were widely shared after the clip circulated, adding to an already busy cycle of reaction around Kohli’s Test farewell. The clip has continued to travel across social media timelines. Former players have offered different perspectives on the retirement across platforms, and the conversation has repeatedly swung between on-field themes and off-field questions.
Virat Kohli has not added further public detail beyond what he has already said around his Test exit, which has meant that each new remark from a former cricketer tends to become a story of its own. The topic has also stayed relevant because India’s Test batting group is in a phase of transition, making comparisons with the previous core inevitable.
The comments by Manoj Tiwary, in that sense, lands in the middle of an ongoing national conversation, one that keeps resurfacing everytime the calendar turns back to Test cricket and the format demands its familiar resilience and performance. The debate, for now, continues.
