Virat Kohli has had a poor 2024 in the red-ball format. While some of it has to be contributed to difficult surfaces that he has played both home and away, a few can be attributed to his weakness outside the off-stump, where he has managed to edge the ball around the fourth stump line more frequently and than ever before in his career. With the big England tour coming up, Kohli decided he will hang up his boots in the longer version of the game. Former Australian cricketer Ian Chappell, in his column, wrote, “Unless the mind is sharp and decisive, the body falters.”
“He accepted that, at the highest level, unless the mind is sharp and decisive, the body falters. When doubt begins to settle in the bones, it disrupts decision-making, impairs footwork, and erodes the spontaneity essential to elite performance. Kohli’s retirement is a reminder that form is more a function of the mind than it is of mechanics,” wrote Chappell in his column on ESPNCricinfo.
“When instinct gives way to hesitation, and confidence turns into caution, it becomes clear that the first place to look is inward. This struggle has been well documented across generations. From and to , Steven Smith and Joe Root, the most revered names in the game have grappled with the invisible weight of expectation and the creeping sense of decline,” he further wrote.
“And yet, many of them have risen again – reminding us that while bodies age, the mind can be retrained, refocused and revived. The path back for older players is rarely through exhaustive technical reconstruction. Rather, it comes from returning to a state of mental clarity, rekindling the thinking of their younger days,” he observed.
“This doesn’t mean blind aggression or naive optimism. It means remembering why they succeeded in the first place: trust, intent, and simplicity. The older one gets, the more mental fatigue takes its toll. Years of pressure, expectation and performance drain the brain’s ability to focus sharply.
“Add the physical toll and it becomes easy to fall into a cautious, survival-first mindset. That’s the trap. The greats who reinvent themselves – like Tendulkar in his second wind, or Sunil Gavaskar in his final flourish – are those who find a way to override the noise,” he concluded.
