"It's Time To Go": Virat Kohli's Intense Chat With Ravi Shastri Before Test Retirement, Details Out

Former India head coach Ravi Shastri revealed on Thursday, that he spoke to Virat Kohli ahead of the latter's shock Test retirement, saying that the veteran communicated to him about havig no regrets with his career and felt that he had given all he could in the long format to his country. Kohli called curtains on his Test career on Monday, 12 May, despite India's five-Test tour of England in June fast-approaching. Kohli finishes as one of the finest Test batters of his generation, with 9230 runs in the format - the fourth-best by an Indian batter - and 30 Test centuries.

Kohli and Shastri formed one of the most successful captain-coach duos in Indian Test cricket history, and the latter has now confirmed reports that the star batter reached out to him ahead of announcing his decision to the world.

"I did speak to him about it, I think a week before that [his announcement] and his mind was very clear that he had given us everything," Shastri told Sanjana Ganesan in The ICC Review.

"There were no regrets. There were one or two questions I asked, and that is a personal conversation which, you know, he mentioned very clearly, there were no doubts in his mind, which made me think, 'Yes, the time is right'. The mind has told his body that it's time to go."

Kohli is India's most successful Test skipper by a distance, with 40 wins from the 68 Tests he captained - 13 ahead of the second-best MS Dhoni. As a player, Kohli is known for his intense, heart-on-sleeve approach to the game, and Shastri believes such an approach came with a limit.

"If he decided to do something, then he gave his 100 per cent, which is not easy to match," Shastri said. "Individually, as a bowler, as a batsman.

"A player does his job, [and] then you sit