Former India captain and Team India star batter Virat Kohli has made a major announcement about his international career, stating that next year’s ODI World Cup will be his final tournament in India colours.
Kohli, who has already retired from Test and T20I cricket and currently plays only ODIs for India, indicated in a recent interaction that the 2027 ODI World Cup — to be jointly hosted by South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia — will mark his last ICC tournament. He added that winning the trophy is now his primary objective, and that he intends to give everything on the field to help India lift the title.
Kohli made the comments ahead of India’s first ODI against West Indies on Sunday, with the three-match series set to begin on the 27th of this month. He shared his thoughts in a conversation with JioStar.
“The 2027 ODI World Cup will be the last ICC tournament I play for India. I’ll give my complete energy on the field. We have to win this World Cup, and I’m ready to do whatever it takes to make that happen,” Kohli said.
He also spoke about the unique demands of World Cup cricket, noting that no other tournament matches its intensity. “You end up playing close to 10 matches at T20-level intensity. One ODI is roughly equivalent to 2.5 T20 games. Sustaining that intensity across 10 straight matches in a major tournament or World Cup is a huge challenge,” he explained.
The 2027 World Cup, scheduled for October–November, will be Kohli’s fourth appearance at the tournament.
Kohli has been in exceptional form since the 2025 Champions Trophy. He has scored 760 runs in 12 ODIs at an average of 76, including three centuries and five half-centuries. Since the start of 2025, he has amassed 1,035 runs at an average of 64.68, and in his last 10 ODIs he has notched seven fifties, three of them converted into hundreds.