Gautam Gambhir Announces Retirement

Gautam Gambhir, who is now officially a former Indian cricketer who played all formats of the game i.e., T-20, ODI and Test matches. He was the left-handed opening batsman who played domestic cricket for Delhi, and captained Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League (IPL).

Gautam made his One Day International (ODI) debut in 2003 against Bangladesh and played his first Test the following year against Australia. He once got a chance to captain the Indian team in six ODIs from late-2010 to late-2011 in which India won all six matches. He was also a part of India's wins in the finals of both the 2007 World Twenty20  and the 2011 Cricket World Cup in which he performed well. After 15 years of international cricket for India, he announced his retirement from all formats of cricket on 4^th December, 2018 though an emotional video on Facebook. Gambhir played his last match for India in 2016 against England in Rajkot. He scored 4154 runs in Test cricket from 58 matches, 5238 runs in ODIs and 932 in T20Is. He said in the video that, “After more than fifteen years of cricket for my country, I want to retire from playing this beautiful game. Two World Cups, highest run-getter in the final of both games, it is the stuff that dreams are made of,” Gambhir retired being the fourth highest run scorer in the IPL, with 4217 runs at an average of 31, including 36 half-centuries. He started his IPL career with Delhi Daredevils and then moved to Kolkata Knight Riders in 2011, before leading them to title wins in 2012 and 2014. He was not included in the squad for 2018 and was included up by Delhi once again. However, an indifferent form saw he left himself limited to bench before transferring the captaincy responsibilities to Shreyas Iyer. Gambhir was conferred with the Arjuna Award in 2008. Willing to go through the same "aches and pains" and "fears and failures" all over again even in his next life as a cricketer, Gambhir said being the top run-getter in the two World Cup finals would remain the high point of his career. 
"I think someone up there was writing my script but looks like now he has run out of his ink! But along the way he wrote some fascinating chapters," he further quoted in his video.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: https://www.indiatoday.in/sports/cricket/story/gautam-gambhir-announces-retirement-cricket-1402491-2018-12-04