It used to be that when a player felt he could no longer compete at the highest level, either due to the physical limitations age imposes or because he simply no longer had the same motivation, he would retire. It was that simple, really. The player asked himself, "Am I good enough to continue playing for my country?" and then decided for whatever reason that he couldn't anymore, and so retired.
Not anymore. Nowadays, retirements are all about making some statement or the other. If you do want to announce your retirement, you either do it in one format or two, to prolong your career in the other. Its like a caveat you need to add for feeling bad that you're walking away from the game. And of course some people simply can't walk away, even when they clearly are well past their best. In fact, they feel so bad about it that they dismiss all talk about the "r" word. Really.
And then there is the most common use of retirements today, employed mostly by ex-Pakistani skippers and the odd Bangladeshi. These "I'm retiring... for now... but I could be back... in fact, I'd like to be back... in fact only an idiot wouldn't *want* me back... but since you're all acting like idiots... I'm retiring and making you all look like bigger idiots, ha!" Younis Khan, Mohammed Yousuf, Shahid Afridi... often they end up captaining a series not much later and then they're sacked, rinse, cycle, repeat. We could probably classify these as neo-retirements (unfortunately not the TV channel).
Then we have the never-ending retirements. Players who just can't get enough of a farewell. I can't even remember the number of times Flintoff has announced his retirement at some different stage or the other. Or Ganguly. Or Muralitharan. Or Warne. At a test/ODI. Then in T20s. Then in first class cricket. Then in a T20 league. And all the same tributes get written all over again. I blame Steve Waugh for starting the glorious never-ending retirements.
The evolution of retirements from being an honest admission of not having it in you to continue to staging a protest or demanding a fitting farewell perhaps only competes with the change in quality of cricket bats.
Not anymore. Nowadays, retirements are all about making some statement or the other. If you do want to announce your retirement, you either do it in one format or two, to prolong your career in the other. Its like a caveat you need to add for feeling bad that you're walking away from the game. And of course some people simply can't walk away, even when they clearly are well past their best. In fact, they feel so bad about it that they dismiss all talk about the "r" word. Really.
And then there is the most common use of retirements today, employed mostly by ex-Pakistani skippers and the odd Bangladeshi. These "I'm retiring... for now... but I could be back... in fact, I'd like to be back... in fact only an idiot wouldn't *want* me back... but since you're all acting like idiots... I'm retiring and making you all look like bigger idiots, ha!" Younis Khan, Mohammed Yousuf, Shahid Afridi... often they end up captaining a series not much later and then they're sacked, rinse, cycle, repeat. We could probably classify these as neo-retirements (unfortunately not the TV channel).
Then we have the never-ending retirements. Players who just can't get enough of a farewell. I can't even remember the number of times Flintoff has announced his retirement at some different stage or the other. Or Ganguly. Or Muralitharan. Or Warne. At a test/ODI. Then in T20s. Then in first class cricket. Then in a T20 league. And all the same tributes get written all over again. I blame Steve Waugh for starting the glorious never-ending retirements.
The evolution of retirements from being an honest admission of not having it in you to continue to staging a protest or demanding a fitting farewell perhaps only competes with the change in quality of cricket bats.
