The BCCI selection committee, headed by former cricketer Ajit Agarkar, was taken unawares by Rohit Sharma’s retirement from Test cricket. The announcement came out just after a meeting at the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai, which, surprisingly, was not attended by Rohit or Gautam Gambhir. But the opening did see the presence of the big guns-the President Roger Binny, the Secretary Devajit Saikia, and GM Abey Kuruvilla-when the Sachin Tendulkar Room and Sunil Gavaskar Room were inaugurated. The excuse for Rohit’s absence was a Mumbai Indians match scheduled for that evening.
It was reported that the evening of Wednesday would see Rohit emailing the BCCI executives while announcing the retirement on social media. While Agarkar was taking a call at the Cricket Club of India, it was certainly a lesson in removing any doubts about Rohit’s availability for the imminent five-Test series in England. But this makes one wonder why he took this step so suddenly.
It does appear that matters regarding the England series were part of the agenda for the selectors in that meeting, but if Rohit was. discussed in his capacity as captain remains to be revealed. Presumably, that decision should have been made a week prior to the Test team selections expected to be about May 20, which is just a month before the series. Thus, it had been reported earlier that Rohit’s taking up of Test cricket would have depended upon how well he performed in the ongoing Indian Premier League. Though he batted well in one or two innings, his overall showing in IPL 2025 was not spectacular.
Whether this retirement was of his own volition or it was forced upon him is not known yet. Incidentally, there were cases where some of the Indian support staff close to Rohit, such as Abhishek Nayar, had their contracts not renewed. This, however, will keep him playing ODIs despite retirement from Tests, as he stated in his social media post.
