Virender Sehwag retires from international cricket and IPL

Virender Sehwag, on Tuesday (October 20), made public his decision to retire from all forms of international cricket as well as from the Indian Premier League (IPL). The 37-year-old brings down the curtains on a glorious international career that spanned 16 years and which saw him aggregate 17,253 runs across all formats. The announcement comes in the aftermath of his decision to participate in the Masters Champions League (MCL), a franchise-based T20 tournament for retired international cricketers.

Speculations surrounding Sehwag’s imminent retirement were rife on Monday after he was unveiled by MCL’s organizers during the league’s opening ceremony. But the Delhi batsman denied reports of him already having made his announcement, stating that he would do so once he returned to India.

Sehwag, however, has made it clear that he would continue to ply his trade in domestic cricket. Earlier this year, he ended a 17-year-old association with the Delhi cricket and shifted allegiance to neighbouring Haryana, whom he leads in the ongoing Ranji Trophy season.

With 8586 runs from 104 Test matches, Sehwag is fifth in India’s list of top run-getters. In One-Day Internationals, he scored 8273 runs, with 15 centuries at 35.05. In 19 Twenty20 Internationals, the right-hander made 394 runs. He was part of India’s World Cup winning sides of 2007 (T20I) and 2011 (ODI) and was a vital cog in India’s rise to the top of the Test rankings chart.

Across eight seasons of IPL, Sehwag represented the Delhi Daredevils (2008-13) and Kings XI Punjab (2014-15) and scored 2728 runs from 104 games, including two hundreds and 16 fifties.

But it was in Tests that Sehwag went on to establish himself as one of the greats of the game. His strike-rate of 82.33 is the best for any batsman to aggregate over 2000 runs. He remains the only Indian batsman to have recorded a triple century, having done so twice against Pakistan (309 in Multan) and South Africa (319 in Chennai).