Michael Vaughan

Michael Vaughan’s retirement from professional cricket seems to have been met with general agreement. I, for one, am sad to see him go. He is the best English (born) batsman in the past decade. His performances drove him to the world number one spot in the ICC Test batting rankings. This is no small achievement; Pietersen the highest ranked English player is ninth.

There is an often used joke about Vaughan that despite a string of low scores he was ‘hitting it well in the nets’. There may lie some of Vaughan’s problems, he was a fantastic stroke player but there are times when a bit of graft is called for. As one failure follows another runs sometimes need to be ground out rather than blasted. His position was made more difficult because he was the (ex) England captain – everyone heard about his low scores. There was nowhere to hide.

Vaughan was an intelligent cricketer whose captaincy was a credit to himself and his team, often illustrating the limitations in the opposing captain. Hopefully Vaughan will not be lost to cricket.