Former Test star Mike Hussey has spoken out about why he kept his plans to retire a secret until the last minute.
Despite planning to retire at the end of the Test series against Sri Lanka, Australia’s Mike Hussey did not announce it publicly until a week before the last Test at Sydney.
The powerful batsman has now admitted that although it left his team in the lurch, he feared that if he had announced it earlier he would have been dropped so his replacement could be brought in.
“Partly why I didn’t want to say anything to anyone was that I cherished every Test match that I got to play,” Hussey told ESPNcricinfo.
“If I had made it known earlier then perhaps they would start looking ahead earlier and not play me in the last couple of Tests.
“That was a small selfish part of it that I really wanted to finish when I wanted to finish.”
As it turned out, when Hussey announced his retirement he was dropped from the limited overs squads, despite keeping himself available until the end of the summer.
The 37-year-old made his debut for Australia in 2005, coming into a strong Test side that included the likes of Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist and Shane Warne. When he and Ponting retired it signaled the end of a ‘golden period’ of Australian cricket.
The current Test side is almost unrecognisable from the one Hussey played in and with Australia now ranked third in the world and 2-0 in their current series against India, you wonder how much captain Michael Clarke would like to have a player like Hussey still in his side.
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