Back to the Pavilion

A couple of years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine the cricketing world without the greats of Lara, Warne, Mcgrath, Ganguly, Kumble, Gilchrist, Pollock etc, but they all have bid goodbye to international cricket. Announcement of retirement by another great Matthew Hayden recently triggered my imagination as to what factors drive this tough decision for any great sportsman.

I believe the way an investor would like to time his exit from the market when the value of his holding is at an all time , a sportsman would want to leave the game at the high of his career at his own terms. However, two complexities arise - 1. When and how do you know you are at your peak & the way forward is downward sloping and 2. if you are indeed at your peak or thereabouts , is it really worthwhile to let go all that comes in abundance with the position you are in - money, fame, adulation etc and rather play as long as you can even if it is likely to be a bumpy ride ahead.

It may be helpful to analyze the behavior using the following framework laid out in the chart above. While all these greats have apparently announced their retirement of their own volition, Y-axis measures the level of discretion actually exercised by these players in such decisions.

• Players high on this measure, use proxies like age, associated wear & tear, strength of the bench (its all relative after all) etc to time their exit and then try and make it as graceful as possible. Warne and McGrath timed it to perfection and chose an ideal setting in Ashes-2006 to retire from test cricket. Similiarly, Gilchrist chose India-Australia series in 2008 for his final moment. Lara chose world-cup 2007 at home ground, though as expected Windies werent up there in terms of team performance.


• Low down the Y-axis, it indicates a situation where an exit is forced by circumstances like absolute underperformance (Hayden in the current SA series), relative underperformance (Kumble vs Bhajji in the Australia test series), big event loss (world cup-07 losst for the Skipper Inzy) and hence such exits are sudden and often contradicts the previous public utterances on retirement.

Some players like Pollock, Ganguly and possibly Dravid next try hard to make a come back so that they can gracefully retire on their own terms.

Other considerations depicted on X-axis like financial (match fee, sponsorship), setting records often drive the decision making and force players to prolong their careers as much as possible. Personal reasons like family issues on the other hand force to cut short the careers. (eg. Mcgrath's decision to retire could have been accelerated by her wife's disease)

Players from sub-continent tend to give-in more to the financial and record-setting considerations because probably more money is chasing them and also because in their culture records hold more importance than in other cricket playing nations. Past performance is also given more weightage in the sub-continent as compared to say down-under and hence more conducive setting to pursue and realize the other goals. So Murali can be expected to keep playing till he feels his record of most wickets is humanly unreachable (not in a way undermining his undiminished enthusiasm to continue to contribute to Sri-lankan cricket)

So, what does one take away from the chart - Warne who was in prime form and was also in race for taking most wickets in test cricket with Murali and had several sponsorships, left it at a real high while letting other things go. On the other extreme, Hayden had little choice with signficant loss of form and still not in the top bracket in terms of sponsorships and records. Though I have spilled the beans above, leave it to the readers to read between the spaces to rationalize the positioning of each of these greats!

With that, I call it a day!
Cheers, Jampak