Who isn’t Sachin Tendulkar’s fan? Raise your hands if you feel like me that his 24 years on crease is not enough for us. Yeah, I know we wish we could see our favourite cricketers playing the sport forever. Well, Cricket has presented us a large number of legends through the years whom we all adore. Followers born during the 80s and 90s had the delight of watching this great sport progress gradually. A progress which has led to the fans now playing daily fantasy cricket games online at popular platforms like 11Wickets.com. We have seen memorable moments which have both surprised and saddened us.
One of many hard things as a cricket fanatic is to watch your beloved cricketers bid farewell to the game. Nevertheless, there are a few players who still had some fantastic years left in them. Rather, they chose to call it quits on their wonderful career. A few of these decisions were due to career-threatening accidents while many were due to normal progression.
Here we name 4 of them who retired a bit early. Check out:
Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke made his international debut against England in 2003 and proceeded to be one of Australia’s most high-profile batsman across both formats building up multiple records on the way.
Clarke turned out handy with bat and ball. He took over the reins of national team after Ricky Ponting declared his retirement from international cricket. Under his captaincy, Australia regained the top Test ranking after a period of 4 years. He also led Australia to win World Cup 2015.
He has scored of total of 16624 international runs in 360 international matches. He was at the top of his career when he chose to retire from every forms of cricket in 2015. He was just 34 years old during his retirement.
James Taylor
James Taylor made his first appearance for England in 2011. Since his debut, he was in-and-out of the English team.
The greatest point in his career came when he was chosen to play in the World Cup 2015. He also scored an unbeaten 98 in a losing cause in their tournament opener. He was before long a pillar in the English side and things were looking positive for him. You can easily declare he was at the highest point of his profession.
After he endured a critical health scare in a training program, the English batsman was diagnosed with a critical heart condition and he was forced to retire at the age of 26.
Mark Boucher
Mark Boucher emerged among the greatest wicket-keepers of all-time in an illustrious career spanning 15 years. In all those years, he was South Africa’s best wicket-keeper and was their pillar. He keeps the record for most quantity of dismissals as a wicket-keeper in every formats of cricket.
Sadly, he was h it in the eye by a flying bail at the time of South Africa’s tour of England in 2012. Because of intensity of the injury, Boucher-who decided to retire by the end of the tour-retired from international cricket on 10th July, 2012.
Graeme Smith
From the moment of his debut in 2002 against Australia, Graeme Smith was instantly viewed as the future of South African cricket.
Following the 2003 World Cup, Graeme Smith was chosen as the captain of the Test team next to Shaun Pollock’s resignation. He continues to be the youngest ever South African captain, 22 years and 82 days old.
Through the years, Smith has proven himself as his nation’s most powerful skipper. He holds the record for greatest number of wins, which is 53 by a South African skipper. In spite of all flawless records, Smith chose to call it quits at only 33 years.
Happy reading!
