Virat Kohli’s return to Test cricket: A nonsensical move that risks damaging his legacy and what he has left to give

The whispers about Virat Kohli's Test comeback have started again. A brilliant run in the ODIs, a nostalgic clip here and there, and the social media quickly turns into a storyline: Virat Kohli, back in whites in 2026. But Test cricket doesn’t reward storylines. It rewards evidence, repetition and scrutiny – and a late-career return would put the end of Kohli’s Test arc back under the harshest light, with far more to lose than gain.

Kohli’s legacy is already sealed in whites. He didn’t step away from Tests with unfinished business. He left with 9,230 runs in 123 Tests, including 30 centuries and 31 fifties – numbers that place him firmly among India’s greatest red-ball batters. His captaincy record is even more defining: 40 Test wins from 68 matches as captain, India’s most successful Test captain by wins.

He retired as the fourth-most successful Test captain overall, behind only Graeme Smith, Ricky Ponting and Steve Waugh. Add in several double hundreds, and the core legacy is complete. That is the first reason why a 2026 return is risky: there is very little legacy upside left to chase. You can’t reopen a completed chapter without inviting people to re-read it differently.

Why the romance breaks in Test cricket

Comebacks promise the best version of a player on demand. Tests rarely cooperate. The format is an audit: it isolates tiny technical drift, magnifies small decision errors, and punishes repeated weakness. For a batter of Kohli’s stature, a return would not be judged gently. Every low score would be framed as a decline, every series a selection debate. Late-career reputations don’t usually get collapsed – they get chipped.

Why did he step away?

The strongest argument against a return is also the least sentimental: Kohli’s Test decline wasn’t a short slump that needed one more run to fix. The trend line stretched across years. Virat Kohli’s batting average from 2011 to 2019 works out to be about 54.98. From 2020 to 2025, it drops to about 30.73. That is not a marginal dip – it is the difference between a generational peak and a prolonged struggle in the same format. This reframes his retirement as a matter of timing, not temperament. It aligns with the sense that he wasn’t pushed out by a single bad match or a series, or by external factors beyond his control. He probably recognised that his Test game had been fighting the format for way too long rather than mastering it.

ODI runs are not a passport back into Tests

The pro-comeback pitch often starts with a simple line: if he’s scoring in ODIs, why not Tests? The problem is that ODI rhythm and Test rhythm do not share the same cost.

ODIs reward Virat Kohli’s strengths that remain highly repeatable: tempo control, strike rotation and match awareness. Tests demand something harsher - hours of leaving the ball, defending, absorbing the pressure of continuous nagging line and length, and constantly choosing patience when your instincts want release. The ball does more, fields stay attacking for longer, and bowlers get time to set traps.

A Test return in 2026 would also sit inside a packed calendar. The danger isn’t only that the comeback fails; it’s that the attempt forces technical tinkering and mental churn that spill into the one format where he looks most in control right now. What’s worse? For everything you know, a return to Tests could affect his ODI game, and thus hurt his preparations for the 2027 World Cup.

Kohli’s stature makes this sharper. A reversal would become a national referendum on what retirement even means. And that referendum would be played out on his scores.

What does a Test return actually achieve?

This is where the risk-reward ledger gets brutal. Best case scenario: he returns, looks solid, maybe produces one signature stint, and exits again. It is a satisfying moment, but it doesn’t meaningfully lift a legacy that already includes plenty of runs and India’s greatest Test captaincy record by wins.

Worst-case scenario: the format exposes old problems, the numbers don’t improve, and the ending gets repainted as a decline story, while the added workload and pressure start nudging his ODI rhythm. Between those extremes sits the most realistic outcome: a mixed run that invites noisy debate and leaves his Test legacy no clearer than it is now, only more contested. In legacy terms, restraint is the more powerful ending. Leave the whites as a finished portrait, not a canvas reopened for correction.

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