Fact-Check: Has Rohit Sharma Announced His Retirement From Test Cricket?

We found that the note was originally shared by Virat Kohli when he stepped down as India's test captain in 2022.

A note is being shared on social media platforms to claim that Indian cricket team captain Rohit Sharma has announced his retirement from the test format of the game.

The context: It is being shared after India lost to Australia in the finals of 2023 ICC World Test Championship (WTC) which was held at The Oval, London between 7-11 June.

Who shared the claim?: A handle named 'ImROhitt45' shared the note on their Twitter account. Its caption said, "Retirement from Test cricket (sic)."

At the time of writing this report, the post had recorded more than 7 lakh views.

(Archives of similar claims can be found here, here, and here.)

Are these claims true?: No, there is no information available in the public domain to support the claim of Sharma announcing his retirement from test cricket.

• The words in the viral note have been taken from the note shared by former captain Virat Kohli who stepped down as the test captain in January 2022, after leading the side for over seven years.

How did we find out?: We went through Sharma's official social media handles, including his Twitter account, but we did not find any posts about his retirement.

• Next, a keyword search did not return any results which mentioned about Sharma making any such announcement.

• A simple reverse image search led us to the same note uploaded on Kohli's official Twitter handle.

• The note was posted on 15 January 2022 and talked about Kohli's journey as a test captain for seven years.

• While saying that he has done his job with absolute honesty, he said the time has come for him to step down as the Indian cricket team's test captain.

• In the note, Kohli thanked former Indian cricket team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and former coach Ravi Shastri.

🇮🇳 pic.twitter.com/huBL6zZ7fZ

— Virat Kohli (@imVkohli) January 15, 2022

News reports about Kohli stepping down: The Quint published a story in January 2022 which talked about Kohli stepping down as the captain of the longest format of the game.

• Kohli's tenure as the test captain witnessed India achieving new levels of success in home and away test series.

• Kohli eventually stepped down as India's most successful test captain.

Conclusion: A fake note is being circulated to claim that Rohit Sharma has announced his retirement from test cricket.

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