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Thilan Samaraweera has retired from international cricket after
being left out of the Sri Lanka squad for the first Test against
Bangladesh in Galle, which starts on March 8. Samaraweera had sent a
letter to Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) on Tuesday informing it of his
intention and the board has now accepted his decision.
"I was shocked with my omission from the squad against Bangladesh,"
Samaraweera said, adding he had been told by the selectors that they may
need him to play Pakistan later this year."There was no point in
waiting for nine months. I respect the decision of the selectors to go
with young players and decided it was the right time for me to retire."
SLC wanted him to play against Bangladesh - perhaps a farewell Test -
but Samaraweera declined because he felt the time was right to retire.
"I never wanted a farewell match because if you're not good enough to be
in the 15-man squad, there's nowhere in the world you can play in the
first XI," the 36-year-old Samaraweera said. "I didn't want to be
selfish and deprive a youngster of his place by requesting to play in a
farewell Test."
Samaraweera's decision to retire was brought on as much by a lack of
Test matches for Sri Lanka in 2013, as his non-selection for the first
Test against Bangladesh. Apart from the two home Tests in March, Sri
Lanka only have one away tour to Zimbabwe during the year, which
Samaraweera was unlikely to attend in any case, before the year-end tour
to Pakistan. A proposed series against South Africa was postponed to
2015.
"I may not have retired so early if the Test series against West Indies
and South Africa had not been postponed because as a cricketer you'd
always want to play against the number one team which is South Africa at
the moment."
Samaraweera will leave for England next week to represent county side
Worcestershire during the 2013 season. "I will take a decision at the
end of the English season whether to retire from first-class cricket,"
he said.
His international career comes to a close after a woeful tour of
Australia, where he made 79 runs in six innings. He reclaimed form in
Sri Lanka's first-class competition since then, hitting 464 runs at 92.8
in four matches. Samaraweera was originally left out of Sri Lanka's
preliminary Test squad for the Bangladesh series, but was later called
into that squad when Mahela Jayawardene's finger injury ruled him out of
the series. He could not find a place in the final 16, however.
In a letter to media, Samaraweera thanked the coaches, clubs, team-mates
and family who had supported him through his career, and laid out the
reason for his retirement. "Although I have not lost the power of my
passion to make a comeback, my ethics of reasoning does not interest me
to do so at this hour where the obvious focus should be to find a
balance in the prospects we have for the future," he said.
Samaraweera has played 81 Tests, and scored 5462 runs at 48.76, with 14
hundreds. He was primarily an offspinner at the beginning of his
domestic career, but transformed himself into a secure, if dour,
middle-order batsman, in order to break into the Sri Lanka side in the
time of Muttiah Muralitharan. He also played 53 ODIs, but his
conservative style of play never made him a natural fit for the shorter
formats, even after he began improving his stroke range later on in his
career.
Samaraweera's Test career has had several starts, most notably when he came back from being shot during the 2009 Lahore attack on Sri Lanka's team bus, after he had made double-hundreds in back-to-back Tests
in Pakistan. Samaraweera had surgery to remove the bullet which had
travelled 12 inches into his thigh, and underwent months of physical and
psychological therapy, before returning to the Test side four months
later.
He was dropped for more than a year in 2006, and again for one series in
2011, but he returned triumphantly from his second layoff to play his
most memorable Test innings - a first innings 102 which enabled Sri
Lanka to win their first Test in South Africa, in Durban.
Though he had received a central contract from SLC, Sri Lanka's
selectors had expressed a desire to build a youthful Test side in 2013,
and was unlikely to play a major role in what little Test cricket Sri
Lanka had scheduled.
Andrew Fidel Fernando is ESPNcricinfo's Sri Lanka correspondent. He tweets here
Feeds: Andrew Fidel Fernando
© ESPN EMEA Ltd.
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