Rohit Sharma has announced his retirement from Test cricket with immediate effect.
“Hello everyone, I would just like to share that I am retiring from Test cricket. It’s been an absolute honour to represent my country in whites. Thank you for all the love and support over the years. I will continue to represent India in the ODI format,” Rohit, who had retired from T20Is after leading India to the T20 World title in the Americas last year, announced in a social media post on Wednesday.
Rohit retires from Test cricket after featuring in 67 matches, scoring 4301 runs with a highest score of 212. He has 12 centuries and 18 fifties, along with two wickets with his part-time off-spin. His retirement will force India to name a new full-time captain almost immediately at the end of IPL 2025, with India’s five-Test series in England scheduled to begin on June 20 at Headingley.
Pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah is currently the team’s vice captain and led in the first and last Tests in Australia in Rohit’s absence.
Rohit’s lean patch in Tests
Battling a prolonged lean patch, the 37-year-old Rohit’s decision comes after dismal performances in the home series against Bangladesh and New Zealand late last year and then a horror tour of Australia across December 2024 and January 2025, where he crossed 50 just once and averaged 10.93 from eight Test matches.
While India won both the Tests against Bangladesh, but were swept 3-0 by New Zealand for the first time at home under Rohit’s captaincy, and then lost the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series in Australia 3-1.
Rohit missed the first and last Tests on that tour of Australia, the first to be at home in India for the birth of his child, and the last, in Sydney, where he “stood down”.
At the time, he had stressed that it was just that, a reaction to his poor batting form, not a “retirement decision”, and that he was not “going to take myself out of the game”.
Speaking to Star Sports during the Test match, Rohit had said, “I sat out of this match because runs are not coming off my bat. There is no guarantee runs won’t come five or two months down the line. I have seen a lot in cricket that life changes every second, every minute, every day.”
“I have confidence in me that things can change, but at the same time I have to be realistic as well. So life won’t change by what people with a mic, pen or laptop write or say. They can’t decide when we should retire, when we should sit out, when we should captain. I am a sensible man, mature man, father of two kids. So I know what I need in life,” he added.