A journey that started as the Team Director, then a couple of tenures as a head coach, Ravi Shastri will be bidding adieu as in charge of the Indian cricket team in their final game of the Super 12 against Namibia in the ongoing ICC Men's T20 World Cup. India can take no further part in the competition after the group stage as they were eliminated on Sunday since New Zealand defeated Afghanistan and qualified for the semi-finals.
The game against Namibia will also mark the final game for Virat Kohli as the captain of the T20I side, who announced in September that the T20 World Cup will be his last assignment.
The Virat Kohli-Ravi Shastri partnership may have been bereft of an ICC trophy, however, the Indian team reached some newer heights under this combo and became the world-beaters at least in the Test matches and took giant strides in white-ball formats.
Under Ravi Shastri, India played a total of 183 games including 43 Test matches, 76 ODIs and 64 T20Is. Team India won 25 Tests with a winning percentage of 58, 51 ODIs with a winning percentage of 67 while coming up trumps in 42 T20Is with a winning percentage of 65.
India defeated Australia twice in their own backyard in two consecutive Test series in Shastri's tenure and the 2020/21 tour was not just a win, it was the test of India's patience, determination, courage and bench strength and they overcame all of it and breached the 'Gabbatoire'.
India also are 2-1 up in the five-match Test series against England winning at Oval and Lord's. The most important achievement or the legacy which Shastri will leave behind will be the pace battery India has formed with the likes of Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Shardul Thakur, Bhuvneshwar Kumar among others, who have bundled out oppositions for fun and troubled their batters with some quality pace and seam bowling.
The recency of memory may suggest that there is a long way to go still in the white-ball formats with the approach and the personnel, but what Shastri and co have been able to achieve in the last five years or so has been remarkable.
Kohli, who has led India in 49 T20Is, winning 29 of them will be going out for the toss, one final time in the shortest format and will be hoping to end it on a high.
The fans, experts, journalists celebrated the Kohli-Shastri combo saying, it's the end of an era remembering some of the golden moments, hoping that under Rahul Dravid, India can break the drought of ICC trophy and reach greater heights. Here are some of the reactions:
