There are English summers, and then there are English summers that contain Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli. The former are pleasant; the latter, unforgettable. This year, the roses will still bloom, and the Barmy Army will still sing. But the air will be thinner, the echoes fainter, because this is a summer robbed of its lords. First, Rohit Sharma stepped away — quietly, gracefully. And now, so has Virat Kohli. It is not merely the loss of players; it is the departure of meaning. A certain class of Test cricket, the kind that moved philosophers and CEOs alike, has drawn its curtain.
The absence feels architectural. As if two marble columns were quietly removed from a historic pavilion, leaving the entire structure precariously leaning toward collapse. One could still enter, but who would stand in awe?
And yes, we will watch. Ben Stokes deserves that. The man has turned trauma into leadership and chaos into a story. He will give every ounce of himself to this series, and it is only right that we show up.
But let us not pretend. Not all cricketers are made equal. Some you watch casually; others, you rearrange your life for. Across boardrooms in Zurich, Karachi, Sydney, and Palo Alto, people rescheduled earnings calls, postponed honeymoons, and stepped out of climate summits simply to witness Kohli in whites, confronting once more the fraught architecture of the fifth-stump line. A craftsman in prolonged dialogue with imperfection, he embodied what many might recognise as the Romantic Peril of Test Cricket, the very paradox that makes the long form so intellectually and emotionally compelling.
But now? With the great ones gone, and the new ones still waiting to become legends, it’s harder to justify the same trade-offs. With Virat absent, the return on investment for five days of Test cricket has fundamentally shifted.
This is not a critique of the younger players. They are brilliant, earnest, and committed. But some of us still believe that respect is not a courtesy; it is a currency. You don’t give up five days of a sanctuary vacation or abandon a boardroom just to watch a rough diamond endure its necessary grind at the crease. You do it for the rare performer whose genius warrants the interruption of your own.
Which brings us, inevitably, to the question: why now? Why would Kohli walk away at the peak of his fitness, form, and fervour? There isn’t one reason. It never works that way.
Great careers end the way great loves do, not with one betrayal or a single heartbreak, but with the erosion of belief.
Still, if one moment hastened this farewell, it may have been the appointment of Gautam Gambhir. His arrival may not be the cause. But it might well have been the final straw. Because when players like Kohli, Rohit, and Ravichandran Ashwin step away almost in concert, you don’t need an inquiry. You need a mirror.
Managing genius is a genius act. Ask anyone who worked with Steve Jobs, Branson, or who still survives under Elon. This isn’t about control; it’s about alignment. You don’t manage someone like Virat Kohli. You understand him. You protect his purpose. You locate his why, and you build everything else around it.
I’ve watched too many small men in large roles fumble this truth. Men who climbed ladders not because they inspired others, but because they complied better. They ended up managing teams far sharper than themselves. And predictably began dimming the lights to hide the contrast. There is no faster way to kill a company. Or a cricket team.
Gautam Gambhir, for all his grit, has never radiated the intellectual largesse required to steward players who are larger than himself. He may be a good lieutenant. But this job needs a philosopher-general, someone who understands that great players don’t just need a plan. They need belief, clarity, and a sense of shared meaning.
Consulting firm IDEO would call this a systemic misalignment between cultural intent and leadership archetype: a failure to preserve the tacit rituals, values, and emotional contracts that define high-performing creative ecosystems. Friends at McKinsey might frame it as a breakdown in vertical coherence — when the ethos at the top no longer resonates with the motivations of key talent.
My favourite organisational theorist today calls it a leadership incongruence error. Upon encountering my blank stare, she added: “It’s the insertion of a low-agency operator into a high-autonomy, high-purpose environment.” The result is not just friction. It is institutional dissonance.
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