Indian cricketer Gautam Gambhir has announced his retirement from all forms of cricket from December 4, 2018. Gambhir will be playing his final game at the Ranji Trophy between Delhi and Andhra at Feroz Shah Kotla starting from December 6, 2018.
The 37 year old has played 58 tests, 147 ODIs and 37 T20s while representing India and has scored a combined 10,000 runs. The batsman made his debut in 2003 and last played for India in a Test against England in Rajkot in 2016. Gambhir has retired with nine test centuries and 11 ODI centuries to his name.
Gambhir in a statement said that he has been thinking about retirement and also dreading it for many years while pointing out his failures in the 2014 IPL and for the reason he was dropped out of the Test side on 2016. His poor performance in 2018 when he had returned to Delhi Daredevils had made him decide that it was time to wake up. Gautam said, “After more than 15 years of cricket for my country I want to retire from playing this beautiful game”.
The cricketer had formed a successful opening association with Virender Sehwag during times when India was looking forward towards stability at the top. The two were the most successful opening partners for India and added 4412 runs together from 87 tests at an average of 52.52. Gambhir also had a successful IPL career as batsman and captain and is the fourth highest run-scorer in IPL with 4217 runs from 154 matches. He is also responsible to lead Kolkata Knight Riders to the title twice. Gautam while talking about his post retirement phase said, “The thing that I will miss the most is the camaraderie of an Indian team’s dressing room”. The cricketer added that it was a wonderful place to be in and would miss all of that and more. Gautam Gambhir added that at some point of time he would like to shed the tag of retired cricketers and would like to recycle himself to be useful for something else in cricket.
Photo Credits: The Live Mirror
