Reports are emerging today that Michael Vaughan will announce his retirement after the Yorkshire v Derbyshire match at Headingley. It's a slightly ignominious end to his career, but stats rarely lie in cricket and the numbers just don't stack up any more.
While the 2005 Ashes may have been his career peak as a captain, the series in Australia in 2002/3 was undoubtedly his peak as a batsman. The career best 197 in Adelaide was a sparkling innings made in the style which, from his early days with Yorkshire seconds, was his trademark; all flourishing cuts, effortless pulls and peerless drives, all conducted with grace and exquisite timing.
Internationally, he first gave notice of his ability in the under-19s where he opened alongside a left-handed biffer by the name of Marcus Trescothick, one year his junior, and the pair's international careers would develop alongside one another. However, where the much publicised mental problems eventually did for Trescothick's international career, with Vaughan it was physical. A succession of knee injuries robbed him of his best years as a Test batsman and, though his captaincy skills were worth a healthy amount of runs in the field, the combined effect of the persistent problems and the burden of captaincy diminished his prowess with the willow.
In the lead up to the crowning glory that was the 2005 Ashes, England embarked on a long winning run, whitewashing the West Indies and New Zealand and beating South Africa on their own patch. The Ashes were won using just twelve players - and Paul Collingwood only played one match - but that group of players would never play together again with Vaughan being the prime casualty. Though he'd return as skipper of the one-day side, his prowess was never in the shorter forms of the game, a fact made clear in that a batsman of his quality never made an ODI hundred. He quit the one-day scene, but stayed on in charge of the Test side, passing Peter May's record of 20 wins to become the most successful England captain of all time. The runs, however, were drying up and he quit the post in 2008. The fact that England have struggled to find even a half-decent captain since then - though Andrew Strauss is doing OK for now - is testament to the standards he set. He finished with 5,719 Test runs at 41.44 with 18 hundreds. His criminally underused bowling - he was a pretty useful off-spinner - brought him just six wickets at 93.5.
It seemed odd at the time when Vaughan was handed a central contract for the current year, but, forced to prove his worth on the county circuit, the scores haven't been there. No hundreds, only three times past 50, a total of 615 runs in 22 knocks at an average of under 30 is not the form of a Test player. Moreover, Ravi Bopara has taken his chance and made the number three spot his own.
It has to be one of the hardest things a professional sportsman can do and admit that it's over. Michael Vaughan makes that step today and the best of luck to him from here.
As a former England captain, he'll have no problem getting a commentary gig with Sky, unlike any professional verbalists, but that's a whole different story.
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