Post Kohli, Rohit, Ashwin India have the players to cope but South Africa expose broken blueprint

For a decade, those three acted like insurance policies – papering over selection errors, bad pitches, and fragile teammates with sheer quality and personality. Now, the insurance had lapsed, and every crack is suddenly visible.

The vacuum they have left behind

Virat Kohli walked away from Tests in May 2025 with 9,230 runs at 46.85, 30 centuries, and a legacy built on winning tough series abroad. Rohit, who called time on his red-ball career a few days earlier, finished with 4,301 runs at an average of 40.57, most of them scored after moving to the top and reshaping India’s Test batting template. Ashwin, the third pillar, ended with 500-plus Test wickets (537) at an average of 24 and over 3,500 runs with the bat – a genuine all-rounder who could control games on his own.

Between them, India have lost around 17,000 Test runs and 530 plus wickets, but the raw numbers only tell part of the story. Kohli soaked up hostile spells and turned them into statements. Rohit Sharma solved the new-ball problem on most occasions with his aggressive intent. Ashwin gave captains a get-out-of-jail card whenever the game drifted, especially in home Tests.

Since their retirement, India’s Test pattern has been streaky. There have been flashes of a new core emerging – Shubman Gill’s monster run-fest in England, where he joined an elite club scoring over 400 runs in a single Test at Edgbaston, hinted that the next batting giant might already be here. Younger names have produced bursts of excellence in friendlier conditions. But when the pressure has sustained – like this South Africa series – the absence of hardened, battle-tested decision makers has been brutal.

The Guwahati defeat underlined three fault lines:

No crisis batter: When early wickets fell, there was no Kohli-type presence to rotate the strike, soak up the pressure and turn panic into a grind.

No controlling spinner: Jadeja and Kuldeep are high-quality, but Ashwin’s ability to redesign fields, speeds and angles mid-session is gone. India looked short of ideas once the pitch stopped doing anything natural.

Leadership in flux: Tactically, India drifted. Fields stayed reactive, bowling plans weren’t reset quickly enough, and the team looked emotionally flat in long South African partnerships – a situation where Kohli’s manic intensity or Rohit’s tactical calm once kicked in automatically.

Right now, the post-giant India side looks talented but brittle: capable of high peaks when conditions suit, but with a much lower floor when they don’t.

Conclusion

The problem is not that Virat Kohli, Rohit and Ashwin retired – that was inevitable. The problem is that India treated their exit like a switch, not a transition. Until the management locks in a clear core and backs them for the long term, this will remain a side living in the shadow of its past rather than defining its own era.