The rumour mills are in overdrive. Recently overlooked for the Ashes squad, the former England captain is expected to announce his retirement within days.
Michael Vaughan’s greatest success came at the 2005 Ashes when he successfully led the England team to an unprecedented Ashes series victory over Australia in nearly two decades. That alone puts him on a huge pedestal. But it was his batting as well that put him on the map. An elegant batsman and a match winner in his own right, Vaughan captured the hearts of cricket aficionados everywhere from his early inroads.
However, injury and a trouble knee injury at that put him out of the game for a substantial amount of time. It forced England to look for interim captains but even the likes of Andrew Flintoff struggled in the next Ashes series that England went onto lose.
Vaughan was in India when the Mumbai terror attacks forced the England team to first move out of the country. But Vaughan was in a preparatory squad in Bangalore and later blamed the attacks for his being omitted from the team. Vaughan was also the bone of contention between the then England captain Kevin Pietersen and coach Peter Moores, the latter refusing to include Vaughan in the team which infuriated Pietersen.
When Vaughan stepped down from the captaincy after South Africa won the Basil D’Oliviera Cup in England in the Test series last year on South African captain Graeme Smith’s belligerence, he had appeared to have been a broken man and his stepping down was almost akin to when Nasser Hussain relinquished the captaincy to Vaughan himself, also during a series against South Africa.
However, Vaughan has not played since and given the current crop of players, it is unlikely he will find a place unless he performs domestically where also he is tussling with the idea that he may be blocking the growth of a younger future England player. The conundrums are obvious given that he even pulled out his name from the IPL in the auctions this year in a bid to stake a place in the Test squad for the Ashes. Now that that dream has disappeared, the thirty-four year old must be wondering how to get back into the team that he had once led with aplomb.
Vaughan certainly has a lot on his mind but is retirement one of them?
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