At 37, Virat Kohli is having one of his best IPL seasons and making the retirement question look silly
There is a version of this story we were all told to expect by now. Virat Kohli, the back end of his thirties, a fading force hanging on for the love of the badge while younger, faster hitters take the game away from him. IPL 2026 has been the opposite of that story. At 37, Kohli has had one of the best T20 seasons of his life, and the more I watch it, the less the retirement question makes any sense.
The numbers do not read like a man winding down
Six hundred runs in 15 innings, an average of 50 and a strike rate north of 164. One hundred, four fifties, a top score of an unbeaten 105 against Kolkata in Raipur. Those are not the figures of a player being carried by reputation. They are close to the best return of his entire IPL career, produced in a season where the league has never hit harder or scored quicker. He even walked out in Qualifier 1 and made a brisk 43 to set the platform for Rajat Patidar's assault on Gujarat.
What strikes me most is how he is doing it. Kohli has always been a chaser of gaps rather than a clearer of ropes, and for a while that looked like it might date him in a format obsessed with the aerial route. Instead he has adapted just enough, finding more boundaries without ever turning into someone he is not. He still bats like he is offended by a dot ball. He still runs twos that other players in their late thirties would wave through.
The loyalty is the easy part to romanticise
Kohli has worn one shirt since 2008. In an era where players chase the best deal across franchises and leagues, he has stayed put through 18 years of near misses, and last season he finally got the reward when RCB won their maiden title and ended a wait that had become a running joke. He was retained for ₹21 crore for a reason, and it is not nostalgia.
It is tempting to frame all of this as a fairy tale, the loyal servant riding into the sunset with the trophy in his hands. That is the bit I would push back on. Reducing him to a sentimental story sells short what he is actually doing on the field right now, which is outscoring men a decade younger than him.
So why is anyone still asking when he stops?
Kohli has shut the retirement talk down more than once, and has said he will keep going until the joy and the drive disappear. On this evidence, that day is nowhere in sight. If anything, the question feels backwards. We should not be asking how much longer he can last. We should be asking how many more players his age could do what he is doing at all.
RCB walk into another final off the back of his runs, chasing the rare feat of back-to-back titles. Whatever happens in Ahmedabad, the idea that Kohli at 37 is a problem to be managed has aged terribly. He looks less like a man at the end of something and more like one who has worked out how to keep the best part going. I would not bet against him being here, in this same conversation, a couple of seasons from now.
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