Legendary Australian wicket-keeper batter Adam Gilchrist opened up about the exact moment when he decided to retire from international cricket. Gilchrist announced his retirement midway into the Adelaide Test against India in 2008. He was only 4 matches away from completing 100 Tests, which would have made him only the second wicketkeeper in history to do so.
Gilchrist revealed that after dropping an easy catch of Indian batter VVS Laxman, he made the decision to take retirement from international cricket and instantly told his teammate Matthew Hayden about this.
“Funny thing happened when India were in Australia the last time I played against them. I was trying to take a catch off the bowling of Brett Lee. And the night before I had been on the phone to my wife all night working out the travel plans because we were touring the West Indies after the India series,” said Gilchrist on the Club Prairie Fire Podcast.
“On that tour, I was probably going to get myself up to 99 Tests and then after that, we were going to tour India and that’s where I would have played my 100th and joined an elite group of Australian Test cricketers and a few others around the world,” Gilchrist added.
“Then the next day, I attempted to take a catch off the outside edge of VVS Laxman, dropped it, an absolute soda, as simple as it gets. The ball hit the ground and I looked at the replay on the big screen, looked at it again and again and again and it went probably 32 times. I turned to Matthew Hayden and said I’m done, I’m out. From the ball hitting the glove to the ball hitting the grass, in an instant, I realized it was time to retire,” Gilchrist further added.
The Australia great recalled how Hayden tried to persuade him out of taking such a drastic decision.
“He looked at me just very quickly and said, ‘Come on mate, don’t beat yourself up, it’s not the first one of those you dropped and it probably won’t be the last, let’s face it.’ Good support from a teammate, but that was a moment in an Indian series in Australia that I remember – the definitive moment of my Test career and have never regretted it since,” Gilchrist said.
