'Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli will retire from T20Is after World Cup': Wasim Jaffer on last dance of India icons

Only Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have breached the 4,000-run mark in the shortest format of the game. The all-time leading run-getters for India in T20Is, batting mavericks Kohli and Rohit are intertwined by the same thread of fate at the grandest stage. A young Kohli tasted World Cup success when MS Dhoni was at the helm in 2011. Four years before India ended its long wait for the World Cup, Dhoni masterminded the T20 World Cup title triumph of the Men In Blue in the inaugural edition.

Rohit, who was a part of Dhoni's young brigade at the 2007 World T20, is leading the Indian side in the 2024 edition of the ICC event. Batting icons Kohli and Rohit are yet to lift a major ICC trophy together in the post-Dhoni era. With Rohit at the helm, India came narrowly close to lifting the World Cup title last year. India's first and only defeat arrived in the summit clash as the hosts lost the final to Australia.

'Kohli and Rohit will retire from T20Is after the T20 World Cup'

With India set to meet bitter-rivals Australia in what promises to be a rematch of the ICC World Cup, former India opener Wasim Jaffer has issued a bold statement about the T20I future of batting icons Kohli and Rohit. “I think they both (Virat and Rohit) will retire from T20Is after the T20 World Cup. It is their call eventually and also the call of the selectors. While they will continue to play in the IPL, I believe we are seeing them for the last time in T20Is at the T20 World Cup,” Jaffer said on his YouTube channel.

Kohli would be 38, and Rohit will be touching 40 in the next T20 World Cup. The next T20 World Cup will be jointly hosted by India and Sri Lanka in 2026. Ex-India opener Jaffer also backed Kohli to smash 100 international centuries. "Yes, I think Virat Kohli will score hundred international hundreds. He has a lot of time left and the way his fitness is and the way he scores his runs with consistency, I hundred percent expect him to cross hundred hundreds," Jaffer added.