5 Best Farewells in Recent Cricket History
Cricket rarely allows you dream farewells. Sport rarely allows you dream farewells. Even great children of destiny bowed out quietly and were forced to leave without fanfare or royal guards or laps of honour on the shoulders of teammates.Some like Rahul Dravid chose those farewells deliberately, after a series loss, in the middle of a quiet period for Indian cricket, through a press conference. Some like Shivnarine Chanderpaul waited too long only for their Boards to send them out unceremoniously without the honour of a last Test or a last series.Some great players have it all like Steve Waugh did, while other greats like his sibling Mark Waugh, become sacrificial scape goats, to walk into the sunset of their careers, sometimes forgotten, sometimes nudged, sometimes shoved.As Sri Lanka prepares to bid farewell to the cricketer they’ve voted as their greatest ahead of Muttiah Muralitharan, Mahela Jayawardene or Aravinda de Silva and Australia prepare to look forward to life after Michael Clarke, whose career has been abruptly ended by a devastating Ashes loss, we take a look at five cricketers history and the game were kind to, cricketers who ended on a beautiful high, revered, adored and remembered.
#5 Michael Hussey
Mr. Cricket started his career a little late but with a Bradmanesque average, scoring four fifties and three centuries in his first 10 Tests, he became the fastest player at the point to score 1000 runs touching an average of 86.18 after two years.
He had trouble with bad form midway through his career and there were calls for expulsion. However, Hussey came back to be the pillar of a great team. He retired when people felt there were still two years left in him. He was supremely fit and showed that at the IPL too.
But great men leave at the peak and that was what Hussey did even though he left gaping holes in the middle order that has still not been filled. Hussey played his last six Tests at home.
In a series that Australia lost 0-1 to South Africa, Hussey was a bright ray scoring two centuries and a half-century. He followed that up with another unbeaten century against Sri Lanka which Australia won 3-0 in 2013. Peter Siddle and Mitchell Johnson carried Hussey on their shoulders around the SCG as he bid adieu to fans after seeing Australia through a tricky chase with an unbeaten 27*.
Hussey finished with 6235 runs with an average of 51.52 and 19 centuries having played 79 Tests even though his debut came after he turned 30.