Gautam Gambhir Announces Retirement From All Forms of Cricket

2011 World Cup winner announces his decision to quit after nearly two decades in the game.

Gautam Gambhir announced his retirement from all forms of cricket on Tuesday, 4 December.

(Photo: Reuters)

2011 World Cup winner Gautam Gambhir has decided to call time on his cricket career. The 37-year-old announced his retirement from all forms of the game on social media.

Gambhir, who last donned India colours in a Test against England in November 2016, was part of Indian title-winning teams at both the 2007 World T20 and the 2011 World Cup – top-scoring for India in the finals of both events.

However, the left-handed opening batsman had been out of favour for a while as far as the national squad was concerned – last making an appearance in the shorter formats nearly six years.

Gambhir’s final outing on the cricket field will come at his home ground, New Delhi’s Feroz Shah Kotla, in a Ranji Trophy tie for Delhi against Andhra Pradesh starting on Thursday, 6 December.

In a heartfelt, nearly 12-minute long video posted on his Facebook page, Gambhir announced a decision he had been “dreading” to put the final lid on a professional career which began in 1999, when he made his maiden first-class appearance.

It took the diminutive batsman only five years to burst onto the international scene, first turning out for India as a 23-year-old in the last match of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia at Mumbai in November 2004.

In the years that followed, Gambhir would go on to establish himself as one of India’s most solid openers – and serving stints as the top-ranked batsman in both Tests and T20Is.

A 12-year international career fetched over 10,000 runs for the country; 4,154 in 58 Tests, 5,238 in 147 ODIs and 932 in 37 T20Is.

Of his 20 hundreds in India colours, Gambhir’s finest hour – arguably – came in New Zealand in 2009, where a marathon 643-minute, 436-ball 137 at Napier helped India hang on to a rare overseas triumph – still their last Test series win outside Asia excluding West Indies.

The most treasured Gambhir memories to a majority of Indian cricket followers, however, will be his 54-ball 75 in the WT20 final against Pakistan at Johannesburg in 2007 and a 97 off 122 balls to win the 2011 WC final versus Sri Lanka at Mumbai.