One of the biggest sport stars of the world, as big as Messi and Ronaldo, announces his retirement

Virat Kohli has been widely considered the most famous cricketer in the world, and the largest celebrity of the sport, one of the most popular in the Commonwealth countries like India, which is where Kohli comes from. On May 12, Kohli has shocked his millions of fans (with 271 Instagram followers, he is the third most followed sportsman in the world, only behind Messi and Ronaldo) by announcing his retirement from Test cricket, aged 36. Given his age and his shape, some fans were not happy...

"Honestly, I never imagined the journey this format would take me on. It's tested me, shaped me, and taught me lessons I'll carry for life", Kohli said on an Instagram post with over 10 million likes. "It's not easy — but it feels right. I've given it everything I had, and it's given me back so much more than I could've hoped for." Kohli reired after 123 tests (matches) for India, scoring 9,230 runs.

Virat Kohli, responsible for keeping Test cricket relevant?

Kohli's popularity has been a key push for cricket worldwide, and is partially responsible for cricket's return to the Olympic Games in Los Angeles 2028. Outside of the few countries where cricket -and specifically Test cricket- is played (United Kingdom, South Asia and Oceania), it's hard to grasp just how massive a star Kohli is, specially from Test cricket, the more "traditional" form of cricket, that is losing ground to other shorter cricket variations.

Test cricket is only played internationally (no clubs nor franchises) by just 12 teams in the world, all of them members of the International Cricket Council (ICC). Kohli had played since 2008 at the India national cricket team. Unlike Test cricket, the popular Indian Premier League (currently halted due to tensions with Pakistan) is Twenty20, a shortened format of the sport.

Stephan Shemilt, cricket reporter from BBC, considers Kohli "without exaggeration the most important factor in upkeeping the relevance of the longest format when it could otherwise have been completely swallowed by the T20 leagues". Meanwhile, Reuters believe that Kohli will leave "a vacuum that will be hard to fill".