Shane Warne will retire from international and Australian domestic cricket after the fifth Ashes Test against England next month.
The 37-year-old leg-spinner, Test cricket’s leading wicket taker with 699 dismissals, made the announcement on Thursday at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).
He will return to the MCG on Tuesday attempting to secure his 700th Test wicket in the fourth Test against England.
”I just know it’s my time,” Warne told a packed news conference. ”I’d like to go out on top. I want to go out on my terms … I’d like to think I’ve earned that right.”
Warne has played 143 matches and bowled an estimated 40 315 deliveries in his Test career, much of it as the premier bowler in the world.
”As a whole, I think I’ve made cricket more fun, given people more entertainment,” Warne said. ”I don’t think I could have written my script any better. I thought I’d be sad, but I sit here a happy man.”
Warne said the decision had been ”on my chest” for many months and he’d likely have retired last year if Australia had not lost the Ashes in England.
”I don’t think I could have asked for my career to go any better,” he said. ”You have your ups and downs, but I have been very lucky to play in an era when Australian cricket was very successful.
”I don’t think I could have given any more to Australian cricket. I’ve given everything to the game.”
In the 14 months after Australia lost its 16-year grip on the Ashes in England, Warne consistently said retirement was not in his immediate plans.
”This last little journey since we lost the Ashes, there’s a real mission for all of us in the Australian team to get that urn back,” Warne said.
”I sit here today [amid] every single trophy that’s available in international cricket … and I like to think that I’ve played my part in helping those trophies get into Cricket Australia.”
While he is quitting domestic cricket for Victoria state and for Melbourne club St Kilda, Warne confirmed he would fulfil the final two years of his contract with English county Hampshire.
Warne was selected by a panel of cricket experts as one of the five Wisden cricketers of the century in 2000. Since October 2004, he has held the record for the most wickets taken by any bowler in Test cricket. In August 2005, he became the first bowler to take 600 Test wickets.
Warne took four wickets in the Ashes-clinching third Test win in Perth that ended on Monday, saying it ”completed a mission”.
Warne made an inauspicious Test debut against India at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 1992, and although many identified the natural talent of the podgy slow bowler, few predicted greatness.
For Warne, that first Test remains one of his greatest cricket moments.
”To have an opportunity to walk off in Sydney where it all began a long time ago I think is a great opportunity and something to celebrate,” he said.
The fifth Test against England starts January 2 at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
Warne made his first major impact on international cricket in 1993, when he produced the so-called ”Ball of the Century” to bowl England’s Mike Gatting behind his legs with his first ever Ashes delivery.
Since then, he has been a magnet for both positive and negative headlines.
He has been a target for bad publicity and has had to overcome potentially career-ending finger and shoulder problems, and survived the backlash for his dealings with a bookmaker and a 12-month ban for taking a banned substance.
In February 2003, on the eve of Australia’s World Cup opener in South Africa, Warne was sent home after admitting he’d failed a doping test earlier in the year.
Warne was found guilty of taking a banned diuretic in breach of the Australian Cricket Board’s drug code and was suspended for 12 months.
Warne’s former Australian captain Allan Border said he was ”in a bit of a state of shock” about the retirement announcement.
Border captained Warne in his first Test, when the leg-spinner returned 1-150 against India.
”There was something special about him, right from the word go,” Border said. ”He got 1-150 in his first Test, so you wouldn’t predict 698 more. But we knew he had something special.”
When asked where Warne would rate in the history of the game, Border put him near the top of cricket’s best players.
”[Sir Donald] Bradman — it’s hard to make comparison with that guy’s record, but the next level of cricketers, Warne is right there,” Border said. ”He’s been a breath of fresh air, what he’s brought to the game is immeasurable.”
Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland said Warne was a ”once-in-a-lifetime” champion.
”To take 699 and probably more Test wickets is simply staggering, and to also have been a champion one-day cricketer is a tribute to his skill, versatility and durability,” Sutherland said.
”But to personally change the course of so many games, to excite the public imagination about cricket the way he has and to inspire a generation of Australian kids to take up the once-neglected art of leg-spinning takes him beyond the stats and puts him in a league of his own.”
Sutherland said Warne was the Bradman of this generation.
”We are the generation that will always say we were privileged to see Warne,” he said. — Sapa-AP