Courtesy: BCCI/X
In a very emotional moment for Indian cricket and the entire cricketing fraternity in general, Virat Kohli announced his retirement from Test cricket on May 12, 2025, effective immediately. While the news has obviously garnered a lot of attention and mentions from top faces of the cricketing world, Kohli’s retirement news and some other cricketing analogy was used as a reference in another unexpected setting. During a joint-briefing about the latest updates on Operation Sindoor and the ongoing Indo-Pak conflict, the Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) of India, Rajiv Ghai, cited a mention of Virat Kohli.
Lt. Gen. Rajiv Ghai said in his briefing that he was also just informed about the decision of Virat Kohli opting to take retirement from Test cricket, also mentioning that just like many other Indians, Kohli is his favourite cricketer as well. He further went on to mention another cricketing analogy with this reference to test cricket about Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lily from the famous Ashes series in the 1970s.
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Lt. Gen. Rajiv Ghai cites famous saying from 1970s Ashes test series in reference to ongoing India-Pakistan conflict
DGMO Ghai said that this Australian fast bowling duo had wreaked havoc to the England batting lineup during this era, which resulted into fans coming up with some unique chants and slogans related to the same. And the saying went like, ‘From Ashes to Ashes, and from dust to dust; If Thomo don’t get you’ll, then Lily surely must!’ Lt. Gen. Rajiv Ghai cited this saying in reference to one of his main talking points in the briefing regarding the latest Pakistan conflict.
He meant to infer that, just like the above saying, even if Pakistan’s drones and missiles manage to overcome India’s initial air defence systems, some other component of India’s high-profile defence set-up will surely thwart off and destroy the incoming threats. This was said in reference to all the latest news pouring in from the last couple of days where the Indian air defence systems have been seen to successfully intercept and destroy any incoming drones and missiles from Pakistan’s launchpads.
