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.
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