Players who retired too early.

[subshakerz]

De Villiers was the most selfish one. He went on a hiatus when his team needed him most as soon as his form dipped and left them in the dust before retiring too.

That average don't look so pretty otherwise.

Yeah it did seem like weirdly selfish timing on his part. SA cricket really declined from his retirement onwards. Ideally he should have taken over as the main bat from 2018 for the net 3-4 years and shepherded new talents.

 

[trundler]

His behaviour in the lead up to the World Cup was pretty off putting too. He wanted to walk straight into the team for the tournament without playing any of the JAMODIs in the lead up. Nor did he want to play the other formats. Yet he was fit enough to turn up at the IPL. Really made me lose a lot of respect for him. Bloke had the diva complex of prime Bradman.

 

[Migara]

Sanga is not a terrible shout, but he was getting absolutely owned by Ashwin in that 15 series before he retired. Was semi-comical at times.

He was getting owned by Swann even before that. He was owned by dome off spinners while he owned some of them like Ajmal.

 

[Bijed]

Yeah I don't think he was on the improve but he is so far ahead of any other opener in England, that he could still be playing now and Eng would be a far better team for it.

I'm not quite sure with Cook, as much as I love him, he had seemed properly done for the last little while before his fantastic last game. His overall stats post stepping down as captain don't look horrendous (averages about 38) but when he wasn't getting random big doubles, I'm not sure he was actually being much, if at all more useful, than some random other guy could have been in his stead. Obviously the handful of big scores do count, but if he'd stayed around, I think we'd probably have all still been complaining about him failing too much.

That said, I do wonder if he could have come back stronger after a break from cricket - I admit I think I argued against him coming back when it was occasionally mentioned, but my view on that has changed after seeing the good it did for Root between the 2020 and 2021 seasons

 

[SillyCowCorner1]

Hero. Legend. Icon.

Rightly so.

 

[Nintendo]

Disagree entirely on De Villiers, if anything I think he should have retired sooner as opposed to spending at least 18 months seemingly sitting on the fence about it

Yeah but he looked good enough to be playing international cricket still after his retirement, it's the reason CA didn't just tell him to **** off when he did his monthly "Maybe I will unretire" stich.

 

[andruid]

Xavier Marshall

I remember him

 

[kevinw]

Zafar Ansari retired from first class cricket in his 20s in order to go be a banker or something

Zafar Ansari was a very bright lad, think he worked for an NGO or something, it wasn't about the money. Had two left wing academic parents. He was one of these weird picks England make on Indian tours because they're desperate for a non spinner who can bat like Ian Blackwell.

Alex Loudon of doosra fame (one forgettable odi) retired to work in the city I think.

Fabian Cowdrey went to work in the music biz. I want to say to manage his brother or friend or something.

 

[TheJediBrah]

His behaviour in the lead up to the World Cup was pretty off putting too. He wanted to walk straight into the team for the tournament without playing any of the JAMODIs in the lead up. Nor did he want to play the other formats. Yet he was fit enough to turn up at the IPL. Really made me lose a lot of respect for him. Bloke had the diva complex of prime Bradman.

I don't have a problem with it. Cricket is really uptight about these things sometimes. There's nothing crazy about a player at the top of his game who's been playing league sports around the world coming back to represent his country in a big tournament. People made way too much of a big deal out of it, and IMO SA should have welcomed him back

 

[Daemon]

He didn’t want to play for SA because CSA were dickheads no? It’s not like Gayle or something where he was purely chasing $. Or maybe it was, never bothered reading up.

Some Australians did it too when they skipped an SL series and played IPL instead. It’s going to be normalised soon enough.

 

[GotSpin]

no it’s because he kept changing his mind every month looking for more attention

should have stayed on and helped out the team and country that had given him everything

 

[mr_mister]

Did Jesse Ryder retire young? Or did he keep plugging away in domestics. Loved watching him bat

 

[flibbertyjibber]

Mark Lathwell was a strange one. Scored a ton of runs, got picked for England, failed and vanished soon after.

 

[Kirkut]

There are lots of players who probably dented their averages by retiring too late (sachin, ponting ect) but who are the ones who retired from tests whose average was not on the decline or may have even improved. Sangakara is one for me, he finished on 57 but watching him in his final years I would say he as good as he ever was and could have still played for 3 or 4 more years.
Examples of batsman and bowlers please

I think Tendulkar retired at the right time, it's just that the 100th 100 anxiety messed up his game.

 

[Kirkut]

Lasith Malinga retirement from tests was disappointing. I still remember his reverse swinging yorkers to Tendulkar and Laxman were gun stuff.

 

[Days of Grace]

Stephen Fleming’s early retirement at 34 left a massive hole in New Zealand’s batting order. Was still scoring 50s and not converting them in his last series.

Everton Weekes retired in 1958 at age 33 with a thigh injury. Scored plenty of runs in his last series.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Lasith Malinga retirement from tests was disappointing. I still remember his reverse swinging yorkers to Tendulkar and Laxman were gun stuff.

I doubt he could stand in a field for more than 2 hours in a day by the stage he retired

 

[morgieb]

Did Jesse Ryder retire young? Or did he keep plugging away in domestics. Loved watching him bat

Think he might still be playing, or at least retired relatively recently.

 

[social]

Think he might still be playing, or at least retired relatively recently.

Almost died recently after pub brawl

Cricketer Jesse Ryder emerges from induced coma but has no memory of bashing attack, manager says

Ryder can't remember brutal attack

www.foxsports.com.au

 

[_Ed_]

That sounds like an incident that happened to him way back in 2013 - not sure why it's been reported so recently (unless he's had something almost identical happen again).