Cricket Retirement Quotes

The Aussies have spent so much time basking in the glory of the last generation that they have forgotten to plan for this one. It's just like the West Indies again; once their great names from the 1970s and 80s retired, the whole thing fell apart. The way things are going, the next Ashes series cannot come too quickly for England. What a shame that we have to wait until 2013 to play this lot again.

gymnasts retire at 20, cricketers at 34, actresses at 32, actors at 75, salesmen at 50, other employees at 58 or 60 years, and doctors and lawyers when their bodies do not listen to their minds. Of course, one class beats them all — politicians retire at 90!

I ordered a pint of Cooper’s Draught and retired with it to a table overlooking the square. And there I sat for a good few minutes doing nothing at all, not even touching my glass, just savoring the pleasure of sitting down and finding myself in a far country with a glass of beer and cricket on the TV and a roomful of people enjoying the fruits of a prosperous age. I could not have been happier. After

Imagine a form of baseball in which the pitcher, after each delivery, collects the ball from the catcher and walks slowly with it out to centre field; and that there, after a minute's pause to collect himself, he turns and runs full tilt towards the pitcher's mound before hurling the ball at the ankles of a man who stands before him wearing a riding hat, heavy gloves of the sort used to handle radioactive isotopes, and a mattress strapped to each leg. Imagine moreover that if this batsman fails to hit the ball in a way that heartens him sufficiently to try to waddle sixty feet with mattresses strapped to his legs he is under no formal compulsion to run; he may stand there all day, and as a rule, does. If by some miracle he is coaxed into making a misstroke that leads to his being put out, all the fielders throw up their arms in triumph and have a hug. Then tea is called and everyone retires happily to a distant pavilion to fortify for the next siege. Now imagine all this going on for so long that by the time the match concludes autumn has crept in and all your library books are overdue. There you have cricket.

Although sledging was not considered gentlemanly at the time and seemed, temporarily perhaps, to die out after WG’s retirement from first class cricket in 1908, there had always been an undercurrent of hostility between the English and Australian players. Lord Harris’s 1878-79 tour to Australia set the trend for many of the ill-tempered Ashes clashes to follow, although the urn itself was not at stake. The home side hammered the English in the first Test in Melbourne, with the tourists’ captain so disappointed in his own performance that he hurled his bat across the pavilion. The bad feelings rolled over to the Sydney Test, and when Australian umpire George Coulthard adjudged local hero Billy Murdoch run out, two thousand spectators invaded the pitch and began attacking the English players. Lord Harris was beaten with a whip, Albert Hornby had his shirt ripped off and six English players were forced to defend themselves with stumps. In retaliation, many English clubs refused to play the touring Australians when they visited the following year.

Marcus Armytage, the Telegraph’s racing correspondent, hails a champion as AP McCoy is voted Liontrust’s Sporting Hero of the Month for February To all the other accolades, and his astounding total of 4,368 winners (as of Monday, March 16 morning), AP McCoy has added another – being voted the Liontrust Sporting Hero of the Month for February by Telegraph readers. The soon-to-be-retiring champion jump jockey beat cricket’s Chris Gayle, who