2 minute readEach to his own and all that, but the “new chapter” in Zafar Ansari’s life sounds dull as shit to us. He’s retired from cricket at the age of 25 to pursue another career, “potentially in law”. We’ve been here before. We’ve been here several times. There was James Bruce,
Continue readingTag: Retirement
Lancashire’s Tom Smith succumbs to chronic back knack
< 1 minute readIf we weren’t actually first off the mark in lauding Tom Smith, we were there or thereabouts. He elicited that laudery by taking 3-29 on the first day of the 2006 season. Fortunately for us, Smith actually made his debut a year before, so we’re still not yet at the
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Robert Key, the ruddy-faced southern me
5 minute readThis article was first published on Cricinfo in April 2016, but they seem to have deleted it so we’re republishing it. For a fair few years, from the early Nineties onwards, there was a phenomenon in British newspapers where Australian opinions of England cricketers were given greater weight. Seasoned cricket
Continue readingThis is how you share a Rob Key picture with the world, you bloody idiots
2 minute readRob Key has retired. It is a sad day. We’re going to don a black cardigan instead of a beige one by way of mourning. We will wear it for 221 minutes in tribute to the number of runs Rob once made in a single Test innings. Adam Gilchrist’s highest
Continue readingJames Taylor has a literal heart problem
2 minute readIf James Taylor’s public pronouncements betray an admirable desire to retain a sense of humour about things, his retirement from cricket at the age of just 26 due to arrhythmogenic right ventricular arrhythmia is anything but funny. It’s easy to point to his having had a job as a professional
Continue readingHow Brendon McCullum made international cricket slightly better
2 minute readIt’s a familiar story to most of you, but it’s worth retelling. Looking back on losing his first two Tests as captain to South Africa by more than an innings, McCullum told the New Zealand Herald: “If we’re being honest, at that point the perception of the New Zealand cricket
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Shivnarine Chanderpaul – the last great West Indies cricketer
2 minute readThe world’s coaching manuals can breathe a sigh of relief because the greatest dissident of modern times has officially called it a day. No-one who remains will question them quite so persuasively. Cricket’s lost a lot. The start and end When Shivnarine Chanderpaul made his Test debut, he did so
Continue readingIs Brendon McCullum retiring too soon?
< 1 minute readYes. Yes he is. The answer you are looking for is ‘yes’. Now that he’s a statesmanlike trendsetter and role model, the very embodiment of what cricket should be, it’s easy to forget that for many years Brendon McCullum was just a mediocre wicketkeeper-batsman who typically flailed then failed in
Continue readingThe Mitchell Johnson bowling action – a nasty and effective and unreliable thing
2 minute readMitchell Johnson contributed some extremely interesting cricket and you can’t ask for much more than that from a player. Overall, his record is very good, but that long-term-very-goodness was created by opposing short-term extremes. At his best, Johnson was as exciting to watch as pretty much any cricketer ever. If
Continue readingShoaib Malik adds to the rich tradition of Pakistani cricketer retirements
< 1 minute readNo-one does retirement quite like a Pakistan cricketer. Mohammad Yousuf’s was a textbook departure, entirely equivocal such that his absence can perhaps only now be considered permanent, some five years later. Or at least it could have been considered permanent if he hadn’t played a number of international matches after
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