Virat Kohli got emotional over Ashwin's retirement, Ashwin reveals
On Aakash Chopra's Baith & Bol, R Ashwin says Kohli got emotional when he heard of his retirement, and that Gambhir told him to play the home season at least.
Virat Kohli got emotional when R Ashwin told him he was quitting international cricket, Ashwin has said nearly two years after his surprise retirement in Australia. The off-spinner also revealed that head coach Gautam Gambhir had asked him to keep going through India’s home season before that.
Ashwin said all this in a long conversation with former India opener Aakash Chopra on Chopra’s YouTube show Baith & Bol, in an episode released on Friday, 13 November. Indian sports sites picked up the Kohli part on Saturday, and it pushed “virat kohli” to more than 10,000 Google searches in India.
What did Ashwin say about Virat Kohli?
Ashwin said he never planned to break the news to Kohli. During the rain-hit Brisbane Test in December 2024, he sat down next to Kohli simply because Kohli was sitting alone, Ashwin told Chopra, and the subject came up.
“He actually got emotional,” Ashwin said, according to Daily Jagran’s report of the episode. Kohli wanted to know how he had made up his mind and whether it was an instinctive call. Ashwin said he told Kohli that he valued his contribution “as captain and as a fielder”. CricTracker reported that the two hugged in the dressing room during the tea break on the last day of that Test.
Ashwin announced his retirement at the end of that match, in the middle of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, and flew home. Earlier in the same episode, he called Kohli the most influential Test cricketer, a chapter that has its own section in the video.
Did Gambhir ask Ashwin to continue?
Yes, but only up to a point. “I spoke to Gautam as well, and he told me to play the home season at least,” Ashwin said, as quoted by CricTracker and Outlook India.
Ashwin said the thought of stopping had started much earlier. During the home series against Bangladesh he wondered whether he could “just end it at Chepauk”, his home ground in Chennai, but the decision kept dragging. The 3-0 home loss to New Zealand hurt, he said, because he felt he could not win the series for his team. Left out of the first Test in Perth, he said he “just decided in Perth itself”.
He also told Chopra it was his body, not his mind, that made it hard to keep up his standard, and that he had been taking injections, Outlook India reported.
Why are people talking about it now?
Ashwin’s exit was abrupt, and there has been a lot of guessing since about whether he was pushed. This is the first time he has laid out the timeline himself in this much detail, with the coach and Kohli both in it. Kohli is also in the news this week because he is playing the ODI series in New Zealand, which ends with the fifth match at Mount Maunganui on Sunday.
Ashwin finished with 537 Test wickets and 3,503 runs in 106 Tests, including six hundreds. He played one more IPL season for Chennai Super Kings and now works as a commentator and YouTuber.
Watch the part about his retirement
The clip below starts at the chapter about his Test retirement and his conversation with Kohli (27:10 to 34:36 in the full episode on Aakash Chopra’s channel).
