No, Viral Kohli did not announce his retirement after T20 world cup debacle

Hyderabad: A video of cricketer Virat Kohli is doing the rounds of social media with the claim that he has announced his retirement from international cricket.

The claim comes after India's embarrassing exit from the T20 World Cup 2022. England defeated India by 10 wickets in the second semi-final played on 10 November. The final will be played between England and Pakistan on 13 November.

A Facebook page shared the video and wrote, "Virat Kohli has announced retirement from cricket…"

Fact Check

NewsMeter looked for news reports but did find any news about Kohli announcing his retirement after the World Cup exit. Also, we noticed that Kohli does not announce his retirement in the viral video.

Further, we performed a reverse image search of the video's keyframes and found the same video published on 4 September by the verified YouTube channel of Gulf News. The description said Kohli was addressing a press conference in Dubai after a match against Pakistan in the Asia Cup.

We also found the same video on ESPN Cricinfo published on 4 September. It was titled "Kohli on answering his critics; I've never paid attention to these things."

Kohli, during the press conference, said, "Never really paid attention to critics. I have played for 14 years, and it doesn't happen by chance. My job is to work hard on my game, something that I am keen to do, keen to improve for my team, and that's something that I am going to continue to do so."

After India's exit from the T20 World Cup, cricket fans and experts demanded an overhauling of the squad and rebooting of the playing style of the Indian team in the shortest format of the game. There is also speculation that senior players like Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Ravichandran Ashwin, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, and Mohammed Shami may announce retirement from T20.

However, India's head coach Rahul Dravid said, "It's too early to talk about it, just after a semi-final game…These guys have been terrific performers for us. We've got a couple of years to reflect on it. These are some really quality players here. Not the right time to talk about or think about this stuff now. We'll have enough time, enough matches as we go on ahead and try to prepare for the next World Cup."

It is evident that the viral video is from a September press conference from Asia Cup 2022. Hence, the claim that Kohli announced his retirement after India's defeat in the T20 World Cup semi-final is false.