The Retirement Question: Why Speculation Around Ro-Ko Goodbye Is Ungainly

The anticipation of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma's retirement is proving to be a complex emotional experience for everyone who's invested in Indian cricket: reverent and ruthless, in equal measure. It's one of those moments that invites reflection on their legacy while exposing the impatience and unpredictability that often accompany the end of sporting greatness.

Kohli's fifty and Rohit's century at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) in the third and final India vs Australia ODI match were more than stats. Those knocks showed a purpose to their craft, and more importantly, the hunger. But how long will they be able to sustain these tenets?

It's safe to assume that the two former Indian captains have played their final international games in Australia, a country where both have earned demi-god status. That said, both will still be strong candidates for the Indian top order when the next ODI World Cup comes calling in two years.

There's undeniable beauty in watching legends approach their twilight. Everyone wants to see them succeed, and the SCG crowd served as one big cue. Such retirement speculation gives fans a chance to say goodbye, to appreciate the final chapters of their careers while they're still being written. More so in the case of Ro-Ko.

Yet, there's an unmissable feeling, accentuated by everything that had evolved during the course of the game, that their knocks during a team innings of 38 and a half overs were like walking tributes, an abridged version nonetheless, to a shared sporting journey that is approaching two decades, heading towards inevitable retirements.

Gerard Whateley best described it, probably. "Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma on their last night in Australia... Not even Mick Jagger and Keith Richards could have played it better," the Aussie broadcaster waxed lyrical as he called the SCG match for SEN Cricket.

Both Rohit, 38, and Kohli, just two years his junior, have already retired from Test and T20I formats. That shared outing at the SCG, made memorable by an unbroken 168-run stand in a winning cause, may well stand as their last great statement, of class and longevity that defined their era.

Statistically, it also matched the record for most international matches played together by an Indian pair — 391st match across formats, starting in 2008, a year after Rohit Sharma's debut. Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid had previously appeared together 391 times between 1996 and 2012.

Dignity Of Past Farewells

Tendulkar and Dravid's retirement rituals, for the record, were a study in contrast.

Rohit's post-match remark, "Not sure if we'll [he and Kohli] be coming back to Australia," echoed the dignity of past farewells, reminiscent of Dravid's understated exit with a non-scripted press conference or Jacques Kallis signing off after hitting a century against India, and his 45th in Tests. No controversy, no prolonged drama.

The farewells of Dravid and Kallis, though marked by minimal fanfare, provided a sense of healthy closure. Their retirements were dignified and free from noise, much like many other examples of untainted departures that sport occasionally gets right.

But retirements aren't always graceful. And the ugly side of retirement speculation often surfaces through premature judgments and media frenzy.

For example, Kohli's back-to-back ducks before the third IND vs AUS ODI triggered a wave of criticism, as if a brief slump could erase his dominance over the preceding years. He and Rohit were only returning to international cricket after a seven-month break. Expecting an instant hit of form was unreasonable.

Question Of Legacy

It's also a fact that retirement talk tends to overshadow current performance, turning every failure into a vote on a player's legacy. Conflicting signals from selectors and players themselves, like clarifications by team management that Kohli and Rohit's exits from the other two formats were voluntary, only add to the confusion. The question of being forced out or leaving voluntarily!

Fans, like never before, are divided too. Some yearn for a fairytale ending, while others demand a ruthless axing. This conflict is heightened with evolving fandom, but it isn't unprecedented. The same had played out during Sachin Tendulkar's prolonged final years, and more recently, during MS Dhoni's exits: first from Tests after a drawn match in Melbourne, and later from T20Is via a brief social media post.

Indian cricket has indeed witnessed retirements with a mix of sentiment and strategy. Sunil Gavaskar's 96 in his final Test against Pakistan in 1987 -- on a Bengaluru pitch that many termed unplayable, Tendulkar's emotional farewell at Wankhede in 2013, and Dhoni's Instagram post on August 15, 2020.

While that famous quote attributed to Gavaskar, "Retire when people ask 'why' and not when they ask 'why not?'" serves as universal advice to every athlete, Dhoni's "consider me as retired" Instagram post continues to intrigue everyone, to the extent that it has become paradoxical in itself.

Yes, Dhoni still plays in the Indian Premier League, and just like Gavaskar, the legendary wicket-keeper still enjoys a massive influence on Indian cricket.

In team sport, a player's retirement should be viewed not as an ending, but as a transition. The eventual, or perhaps imminent, farewell of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma will, like past transitions, usher in a new era. With Shubman Gill already leading in Tests and ODIs, his rise to all-format captaincy seems only a matter of time.

At such a crossroads, it's equally important to treat a player's departure as a tribute in itself, not an autopsy of missed opportunities. Rushing a player's exit with baseless speculation and distorted narratives should not be part of the game.