England spinner Graeme Swann yesterday announced his retirement from international and first-class cricket with immediate effect, dropping a bombshell just days before the beleaguered tourists meet Australia in their fourth Ashes Test.
Swann, who took 255 wickets in 60 Tests over five years and is sixth on the list of Test wicket-takers for England, said his squad’s surrendering of the Ashes to Australia in Perth last week had cemented his decision to call it a day.
His abrupt announcement further unsettles England, who trail 3-0 in the series after three heavy defeats and are battling to avoid a humiliating 5-0 series whitewash.
Photo: AFP
“I know I’m making a decision for the right reasons. I made the decision after the Perth Test. It was probably halfway through that Perth game, to be honest,” Swann, 34, said at a press conference in Melbourne.
“My body doesn’t like playing long forms of cricket, my arm doesn’t cope with bowling 30 to 40 overs in the first innings and then repeating it in the second innings a day later,” he added. “I could feel my performances tapering off to the back-end of games and I wasn’t happy with that.”
The off-spinner, a jovial and popular character among his team, has been under pressure to keep his place in the squad after taking just seven wickets at an average of 80 in the three Tests in Australia.
Swann, a key member of the side that won the previous three Ashes series, will miss the fourth Test starting in Melbourne on Thursday and the final Test in Sydney, with fellow spinner Monty Panesar likely to take his place.
Swann’s withdrawal means further disruption for England following the departure of batsman Jonathan Trott earlier in the tour with a stress-related illness.
“With two games to go in Australia and then a fiercely competitive summer against Sri Lanka and India, I feel that it is a great time for someone else to strap themselves in and hopefully enjoy the ride as much as I have,” Swann said, adding that: “It was very difficult decision. This England team has been my family for the best part of a decade now and you spend so much time with guys you absolutely love to pieces.”
Swann said that in hindsight, he could have retired after the previous Ashes series in England earlier this year.
“Why didn’t I stop then? I knew more or less that the time was coming up,” he said. “But I’d never forgive myself — we had the chance to potentially come out here and win four Ashes series on the bounce.”
Swann, who made his Test debut in 2008 and averaged 29.96 with the ball, said his decision had nothing to do with uproar over comments he made on Facebook last week likening the third Ashes Test loss to being “raped.”
“It was unfortunate that someone chose to trawl through my brother’s Facebook page. I did apologize for that and it had nothing to do with it,” Swann said.
England director Andy Flower said Swann had played a major role in the squad’s recent success.
“The dressing room will be a very different place without Graeme’s unique personality and I would like to wish him all the very best for the future,” Flower said in a statement.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier