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Zafar Ansari retires with immediate effect

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SURREY ALL-ROUNDER ZAFAR ANSARI HAS ANNOUNCED HIS DECISION TO RETIRE FROM ALL CRICKET WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT.

The 25-year-old recently made his Test debut for England, playing against Bangladesh in October 2016.

Zafar has been with Surrey CCC since the age of eight, playing in every age group within the club system. He has successfully combined his cricketing career with academic endeavours. In 2011, he was part of the Surrey squad that won the Lord’s final, whilst still studying at Cambridge University, where he achieved a Double First in Politics, Philosophy and Sociology in 2013.
Over the next five years, his cricket career progressed as he earned International honours and he was capped by Surrey in 2014.

He made his One Day International debut for England in 2015 and was named in the Test squad that winter, but was ruled out by a freak hand injury sustained whilst fielding at Old Trafford late that season.
Shortly afterwards, he began a Master’s degree in history at Royal Holloway, University of London, which he completed with a Distinction at the end of last year, combining this work with a career for Surrey in all formats and Test cricket for England.

Zafar will be leaving cricket to pursue new challenges with the very best wishes of everyone associated with Surrey County Cricket Club.
Speaking today, Zafar Ansari said: “After seven years as a professional cricketer and almost two decades in total playing the game, I have decided to bring my cricket career to an end. This has been a very difficult decision to make and I have not made it lightly. I started playing for Surrey at the age of 8 and the club has been a hugely important part of my life since then. Surrey have always completely supported me and I am extremely grateful to the club for their backing over the years. It is, therefore, with great sadness that I say goodbye.

“Nevertheless, I have always been clear that when the time was right for me to move on I would, and that time has now come. While the timing may come as a surprise, I have always maintained that cricket was just one part of my life and that I have other ambitions that I want to fulfil. With that in mind, I am now exploring another career, potentially in law, and to achieve this I have to begin the process now.
“I will look back extremely fondly on playing with some wonderful teams and having the opportunity to perform in front of the best crowds in county cricket at the Kia Oval. Equally, to have played three Test matches for England was a huge honour and it is something I will undoubtedly savour for the rest of my life. Most of all, I will miss the people with whom I have shared my career and I cherish the relationships that I’ve formed along the way.
“I would like to thank Surrey and its fans for the way they have supported and encouraged me over the last 17 years. I am now looking forward to starting a new chapter in my life, but I know that Surrey will always feel like a home to me.”

Alec Stewart, Director of Cricket at Surrey CCC, added: “Zafar’s exceptionally tough but considered decision is one that we should all respect and understand. To retire at such a young age when his cricket career was progressing very nicely, earning a Test debut against Bangladesh last winter, proves that he has given great thought in deciding to walk away from the professional game.

“He is one of our own, having come through our age group and academy system where he first played for the county at the age of eight. Throughout his time with Surrey he has represented the club with great pride and skill. He will be missed by all his Surrey team mates, members and supporters and I speak on behalf of everyone in thanking him for his loyal service.
“We wish Zafar the very best in whatever the future holds for him and he will always be welcomed back to the Kia Oval with open arms.”


https://www.kiaoval.com/main-news/zafar-ansari-announces-retirement/



Extremely shocking news, but all the best for his new ventures in life!
 
was never talented enough to play at the highest level hard work only takes you as far .Shan Masood should follow his example.
 
Probably has some other business ventures or something lined up.

He could still play club cricket as a hobby.
 
Seems like he has a good education to fall back on for when cricket doesn't work out. Good luck to him.
 
Could have developed into a proper allrounder had he devoted proper time to cricket. It was, perhaps, not his priority it seems
 
London_Lahori said:
What the........ he could have played for Surrey for a long time. Surprise really.
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Markhor said:
Seems like he has a good education to fall back on for when cricket doesn't work out. Good luck to him.
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This retirement was expected going by an interview in 2015, cricket for Ansari is nothing more then a summer sport and with him being good at it he happened to progress further then he expected. For him, cricket or any other field alone is not the be and end all when it comes to life so he doesn't spend too much time on one facet before moving on to the next. he's like an esteemed hippie. Quiet frankly it's a blessing in disguise, don't want such a tosser playing for the national cricket team. When you don the three lions, you belong to your queen and country; I expect nothing less then 100% dedication!
 
Why would he retire like this? He was part of the squad few months ago. A couple of good seasons and he could be back in the team again and become a regular feature.
 
Only the English are capable of this,would be interesting to see what the child prodigy pursues now.

Guess he was never really interested to play international as such.
 
Probably going to Bar at Law - that can't be done while playing cricket. May be, he'll come back in cricket as administrator.
 
I hope Umar Akmal, Ahmed Shehzad and a few others too find something more exciting than cricket. We will fully respect and support their decision. :D
 
Use to play against the guy when he was at school. He went to a very nice private school in south west London and then went to study at Cambridge. Just goes to show the opportunities that are present in the UK. He realised he'd never make it right to the top and so absolutely no point of him torturing himself at county level when he can be using his youth and brain to get himself established and be earning good cash.
 
MMHS said:
Probably going to Bar at Law - that can't be done while playing cricket. May be, he'll come back in cricket as administrator.
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Yep.

He's going to be a barrister. (What Americans call a "trial lawyer".)

Sound move.
 
The guy is freakishly talented in academia, cricket and also music. If anything i was surprised he chose to play cricket over making big bucks in the city given he could walk into basically any big firm and get hired. He's a good cricketer but not good enough to be a regular at test level and i think at 25 he's doing the right thing by getting out. He'll have a 7 figure net worth by the time he's 40.
 
[MENTION=46929]shaz619[/MENTION] put it very aptly. Cricket was just another sport for him - a hobby, at most. He just happened to be very good at it. This decision was imminent but after a below average tour and a couple of bad county games, the situation exacerbated, and he realized cricket was not the place for him. Quite frankly, I think its a good decision. The white British elite aren't too inclined towards a single thing. In fact, its the same for elites around the world. Shan Masood would do something similar but unfortunately, he's not as academically strong is Ansari.
 
Wow cant believe this guy is throwing it all away.

I kind of dont like his decision, but then again he knows better what he wants.

But still his decision bothers me as others try hard to get to this level and he is just throwing it away for a office job.

I would do anything to earn from playing on the field
 
Understandable, he was never talented enough in cricket to be a top international cricketer.

In the long run he will be better off by using his intellectual gifts and forging a career in banking or some other well-paying professional field.
 
Major said:
Wow cant believe this guy is throwing it all away.

I kind of dont like his decision, but then again he knows better what he wants.

But still his decision bothers me as others try hard to get to this level and he is just throwing it away for a office job.

I would do anything to earn from playing on the field
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Preferences, I guess. He could've always chosen to do both tho.
 
shaz619 said:
This retirement was expected going by an interview in 2015, cricket for Ansari is nothing more then a summer sport and with him being good at it he happened to progress further then he expected. For him, cricket or any other field alone is not the be and end all when it comes to life so he doesn't spend too much time on one facet before moving on to the next. he's like an esteemed hippie. Quiet frankly it's a blessing in disguise, don't want such a tosser playing for the national cricket team. When you don the three lions, you belong to your queen and country; I expect nothing less then 100% dedication!
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I wouldn't describe him as a tosser, he could just as well become a T20 mercenary during the off season and earn big bucks while travelling around the world expenses paid. He is an ambitious young lad with bags of potential, unfortunately with the popularity of football and even rugby being an international cricketer for England isn't as big of a draw as it may have been in places like pakistan and India, he can just as well serve his country as a well established lawyer or politician. best of luck to him.
 
ExpressPacer said:
Preferences, I guess. He could've always chosen to do both tho.
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Managing 2 degrees alongside a professional cricketer career was one thing, managing a whole new career alongside being a professional cricket is just out of the question.
 
silentkiller187 said:
I wouldn't describe him as a tosser, he could just as well become a T20 mercenary during the off season and earn big bucks while travelling around the world expenses paid. He is an ambitious young lad with bags of potential, unfortunately with the popularity of football and even rugby being an international cricketer for England isn't as big of a draw as it may have been in places like pakistan and India, he can just as well serve his country as a well established lawyer or politician. best of luck to him.
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Elite English cricketers make 7 figures a year especially with T 20 leagues around now but yeah Zafar was never going to be an elite English player.
 
Xoib said:
Elite English cricketers make 7 figures a year especially with T 20 leagues around now but yeah Zafar was never going to be an elite English player.
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Funnily enough, you're wrong.

The combination of which private school he attended (Hampton, which my nephew attends) and which university (Cambridge) means that if Captain Root loses the Ashes, Ansari would be the next England Test captain.

That's how the old boys' network works.
 
Junaids said:
Funnily enough, you're wrong.

The combination of which private school he attended (Hampton, which my nephew attends) and which university (Cambridge) means that if Captain Root loses the Ashes, Ansari would be the next England Test captain.

That's how the old boys' network works.
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England have a bit more structure so the loss of an ashes series will not necessarily lead to a demotion. Elite barristers will make much more over their career span than an elite cricketer, hes a smart lad and is planning for life after the 30's.
 
This is what Shan Masood needs to do if he's to save some grace .
 
Desi parents eh :P

In all seriousness he knows best for himself what he wants, sad to see him walk away but, respect his choice
 
I hope Umar Akmal, Ahmed Shehzad and a few
others too find something more exciting than
cricket. We will fully respect and support their
decision.
 
The difference is Umar Akmal, Ahmed Shehzad and all these guys you're mentioning is they don't have a Double First in Politics, Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Cambridge or a Masters with Distinction at the University of London in History...
 
Junaids said:
Funnily enough, you're wrong.

The combination of which private school he attended (Hampton, which my nephew attends) and which university (Cambridge) means that if Captain Root loses the Ashes, Ansari would be the next England Test captain.

That's how the old boys' network works.
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What is Ansari's ancestry and history? His name is very sub continental but he's got a very posh background unlike most immigrants. And he doesn't look a tiny bit South Asian either. I mean, if you look at the likes of Zayn Malik, who's got a white mum, even he looks South Asian but Ansari looks like a white Brit from every angle.
 
ExpressPacer said:
What is Ansari's ancestry and history? His name is very sub continental but he's got a very posh background unlike most immigrants. And he doesn't look a tiny bit South Asian either. I mean, if you look at the likes of Zayn Malik, who's got a white mum, even he looks South Asian but Ansari looks like a white Brit from every angle.
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His mother's English whilst his father migrated from Pakistan. He's a 'Professor of history of Islam and culture'.
 
I remember an interview a few years ago where he said that he plays cricket as a hobby and it was means to occupy himself during summer breaks. He happened to be good at it so he just went along with the flow but becoming a full time cricketer was never his goal
 
And some real ignorant comments above fe saying he wouldn't have made it in international cricket etc etc

That was his first tour ever and that too his debut series
 
He seems to be superbly gifted. I envy him his all round accomplishments and wish him the best.

To have played first class and for his country while also excelling in academics at a world class university- well, that's already much more than most people will do in a lifetime. Well done, him.
 
Everyone has their dreams.

Good to see him pursuing it rather than sticking to something he's not 100% into.
 
Smart guy realized pretty quick he will not be a good cricketer so moved on.Good for him its easy at 25 to find alternate option thna do at 35.
 
Slog said:
And some real ignorant comments above fe saying he wouldn't have made it in international cricket etc etc

That was his first tour ever and that too his debut series
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He have pretty average FC stats after 70 odd matches.
 
Zafar Ansari: ‘If money was a motivation I would have stayed longer in cricket’

Professional sport is scarred by stories of ageing athletes clinging to faded glory, or by bleak tales of their struggles in retirement, and so Zafar Ansari stands out in shimmering contrast. Ansari played three Tests late last year, his debut in Bangladesh and two in India, picking up five wickets and grinding out a highest score of 32. It was a start in the hardest arena of cricket and so Ansari’s retirement in April, at the age of 25, seemed unusual.

Of course those who knew him felt no shock. Alec Stewart, the director of cricket at Surrey, for whom Ansari had played since the age of eight, was supportive. “It’s a brave and considered decision,” Stewart said. “He was always open and honest.”

Stewart alluded to Ansari’s academic background, for the left-arm spinner had obtained a double first in social and political science from Trinity Hall, Cambridge, as well as a subsequent MA in history. “When Zafar was reading a novel, the rest of our boys would be doing a colouring-in book,” Stewart said in his homespun way. Kevin Pietersen, who played with Ansari at Surrey, tweeted amusingly: “Way too clever to be a cricketer!”

Over the last six weeks I have got to know Ansari a little better. It is striking to receive some beautifully written emails from a sportsman, whether young or retired, about subjects stretching from I Am Not Your *****, the recent James Baldwin documentary, to Ansari’s encouraged and flowing analysis of Labour’s unexpected election results. Books and writing have been at the heart of our exchanges, from Hisham Matar’s The Return to Norman Mailer’s The Fight.

It seems fitting that Ansari suggests we meet at the National Theatre, rather than The Oval, so he can talk for the first time in detail about his reasons for leaving cricket. After we have chatted for an hour he relives the quietly dramatic moment when he told his Surrey team-mates he was retiring a month into a new season: “There definitely were a few tears. I was choking up, and eventually crying. Other guys were also in tears. Alec Stewart choked up and Kumar Sangakkara said some lovely things. A physio I’ve known a long time was crying his eyes out. It was tough.”

Ansari smiles at his bittersweet memory. “It’s difficult when you don’t have a Twitter account, and are reserved in your public output, because these are very hard decisions you spend hours talking about with your family. But once you stop playing it’s natural there are lots of things you’ll miss. So it was reassuring it felt difficult.

“It would actually be inhuman to think that you’d just forget. You can’t move away from something you did for so long without an ache. But I’m fortunate this is my choice – rather than a decision forced on me by injury or age. It happened over a long period as my competitive instinct was diminishing – and there was a fundamental sense I needed to be not only obsessive about cricket but obsessive about constantly improving my game. I started to tire of the complete immersion demanded by cricket.”

Ansari’s involvement with England’s Test team underlined that consuming focus – while making him regret the way in which international sport isolated him from real life. “I don’t want to make it sound negative but being an England cricketer requires a single-mindedness about cricket I lack. At Surrey, having lots of disparate things in my life helped my cricket. But this approach was not appropriate with England. The standard of cricket and the intensity of being abroad for 12 weeks, with the press around you, meant I could not be myself. I was missing out on things that are authentic to me.”

He was proud to have become a Test cricketer and Ansari knew he should be thinking more about bowling to Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli than worrying about Donald Trump. But such a restricted worldview did not make sense. “It was a very politically significant time. Trump was elected on the first day of our opening Test in India. I was batting at 10 and we weren’t allowed our phones in the dressing room. I was getting snippets of information from security but I felt so disconnected from something I would have been hyper-connected to here. The combination of playing very difficult cricket, while missing things that mattered so much, made me think more clearly about my future.

“I heard the news about Trump at the end of that day’s play. We got our phones and it was a shocking moment. I expected [Hillary] Clinton to edge it and found it difficult to accept. I’ve since focused most on the policy – like changes to healthcare provision, the attempted Muslim ban, as well as the ramping up of immigration and deportations – rather than just thinking of Trump as the clown he often appears. It’s important to be less hysterical about the person but more hysterical about the political implications.”

Could he talk about such concerns to his England team-mates?

“Yeah, and I think they enjoyed the fact we had conversations around the breakfast table that we wouldn’t normally have as cricketers. They are by no means apolitical but their focus is inward a lot of the time. So we had some interesting discussions and there was a range of opinions.

“I don’t know if there were any people who were pro-Trump. But some were definitely sympathetic to things he was saying. I took it as a positive that there was space for these conversations. But when you have a degree there’s this expectation you can provide answers to questions you have no idea about. I’m just not that well-read so sometimes it was quite funny.”

Just as people expect Ansari to be the proverbial boffin, it was assumed by some that he would leave cricket for a career in the City. “People were really supportive of my decision to retire. Mike Atherton wrote a really nice piece – as did Ali Martin in the Guardian. But there can be the assumption that because you’ve been to Cambridge you’d only give up cricket to earn a lot of money. My girlfriend and friends found that quite funny – because they know how far it is from the truth. Cricketers don’t get paid like footballers but I was earning more than my parents – and they have been academics for 40 years. So if money was a motivation I would have stayed longer in cricket.”

Ansari smiles when he outlines his plans for the next year.

“I’m going to work for a charity, starting in September, which supports young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. It’s called Just For Kids Law and they’re in north London. They work with young people involved in the criminal justice system. These are kids from disadvantaged backgrounds with educational difficulties, exclusions and immigration cases. I’m doing a year there as a trainee youth advocate while taking an evening law conversion course. It’s a great opportunity to develop new skills and, hopefully, help a few people.”

Compassion for others, and curiosity about their lives, beats just as strongly inside Ansari as his intelligence. “There are many people in cricket who are cleverer than me,” he suggests. “I think what perhaps differentiated me from other players wasn’t necessarily my ‘intelligence’ but rather my wider interests. I love going to the cinema, I love listening to podcasts and hearing people talking about politics and broader social issues.”

Did he sometimes feel unhappy as a cricketer? “It sometimes felt claustrophobic with a sense of me wanting to be doing other things. It was a restlessness rather than an unhappiness. I was tussling with it for two years and I worried about letting people down who had invested a lot in me. Alec Stewart had always been very good to me so I was concerned that, because of his own passionate commitment to cricket, he would struggle with me walking away at 25 – and saying that there is more to my life than wanting to be an international cricketer. But it was absolutely the opposite. Alec and everyone at Surrey understood – which really helped.

“Since retiring it’s become obvious that the temporality of cricket is so distinctive when you’re a player. You spend five days a week from 9am to 7pm at the ground watching cricket, surrounded by cricketers. But since I’ve stopped playing I’ve started to follow the game more at home. I’ve followed England the last few weeks – and I’m engaging with it most days. I look at the scores online and I might watch 20 minutes of highlights. So that’s 40 minutes a day where I’ve followed cricket for pleasure. I didn’t do that as a player.”

Have there been days when he regretted his decision? “No. I’ve been back to The Oval a few times, as I’m still involved with Surrey’s charitable arm, and I’ve been up to the dressing room during games. It’s felt very comfortable.”

Ansari can now savour his three Test appearances. “Absolutely. The crowds weren’t that large in India [in Rajkot and Visakhapatnam] or Bangladesh – but they were intense and exuberant. The atmosphere made it special and I am more and more proud of those five wickets and the 49 runs I scored. My first Test wicket in Bangladesh was quite magical and it meant a lot when I was handed my cap. Mark Ramprakash [England’s batting coach] and I had played a little cricket together and he spoke incredibly kindly about me. That sense of entering an exclusive group is something to be proud of.”

Did his more expansive interests outside cricket help him cope with failure better – when he dropped a catch or bowled poorly? “I probably felt those failures as much as anyone. In the moment of failure, or even the day of the failure, it hurt. But I could rationalise the situation a little more easily. I could genuinely say to myself that there are things that are more important in my life.”

Ansari flummoxed many whenever he was asked to pick his dream slip cordon. In 2015 he listed Malcolm X, Rosa Luxemburg, Chimamanda Adichie and Angela Davis. He laughs. “We get asked to do them every year and it’s funny how people pick up on that particular selection. Malcolm X is definitely someone I’m fascinated by but the last one I did included Rihanna and James Baldwin. It’s just fun.”

There is a seriousness, however, to Ansari’s interest in race and politics. His Masters’ thesis explored the legacy of the Deacons for Defense – an obscure 1960s black civil rights group in Mississippi and Louisiana.

“They were more conservative than the Black Panthers. But they were based in the deep south and reflected their geography. The Black Panthers had a more coherent leftist ideology but the expressive politics of the Deacons for Defense were very powerful. Considering America today, with Black Lives Matter, I looked back and tried to assess all the Deacons of Defense had done.”

The world today is even more fractured and dangerous. With a white mother and having been born in Ascot and gone to Cambridge, Ansari stresses that: “I obviously had a privileged upbringing. But I think I look at the urgent questions we face today through my father’s eyes, to some extent, an Asian man and a Muslim. He arrived in the UK from Pakistan in the early 1960s, aged 14, and I always try to consider things from his perspective.

“Society is in a concerning place whatever your background. There are troubling questions about inequality and the atomisation of people – the way in which societies are splitting up socially and economically. There are 3.1 million Muslims in this country and it’s often very difficult to have conversations about divisions in British society after devastating attacks on all communities. But it’s important we keep having those conversations.”

Cricket is a wonderful diversion – and, as Ansari makes clear, it can also play a part in uniting communities. “It was a special moment this winter when we had four very different England players with a Muslim background in Moeen Ali, Adil Rashid, Haseeb Hameed and me on tour. They will continue to be great representatives for England.”

Ansari will make his own lasting contribution in very different fields. At 25 it’s impossible to know yet where his best work will unfold – but it is easy to believe that, beyond cricket, so many more people will benefit from his intelligence and concern for the world around him. Zafar Ansari’s real life, after all, has only just begun.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/jun/26/zafar-ansari-interview-money-cricket-surrey-england
 
Left-field decision: Calling it a day at 25 – Zafar Ansari

First published in the 2018 edition of the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, former England and Surrey all-rounder Zafar Ansari revealingly explains his shock decision to retire from cricket at the age of 25, and the everyday challenges he faced as a professional cricketer.

As I walked off The Oval in April 2017, bowled by Lancashire’s left-arm spinner Simon Kerrigan for three, I knew the time had come to end my professional career. I texted my girlfriend and my brother, then spoke to my parents. They all suggested I should allow the normal feelings of embarrassment that come with a low score to subside. Quickly, however, they realised I had done all the thinking I needed.

This was not the first time I had confided in those closest to me about retiring. In the year leading up to the Lancashire game, I had returned to the subject with tedious regularity. I had also spoken sporadically with colleagues at Surrey about the possibility over the seven years I held a contract there. And it was, at least partly, for this reason that Alec Stewart, Michael Di Venuto and Gareth Batty – the club’s director of cricket, head coach and captain – were so supportive when I explained my reasoning during a Championship match at Edgbaston the following week. As Alec later said, I was “never going to be a county cricketer at 30 or 35 – or even 28”.

I begin with this not to indulge in mawkish narrativising but to emphasise that this was not a kneejerk decision, nor even one made over a period of months. Rather, both through design and accident, I had never reconciled myself to life as a professional cricketer. Throughout my career, retirement was almost perpetually imminent. So why had I never allowed myself to settle into this unique existence? This question implicitly emerged in some of the more sceptical reactions, which largely fell into two categories.

On the one hand, there was a struggle to comprehend why someone would give up something for which so many would sacrifice so much: by calling it a day at 25, I was doing these people a disservice. I can only respond that, from my experience last summer, watching cricket – even avidly – is different from playing it for a living. To assume that a passion for the sport as a spectator or club player translates into a love of the lifestyle of a professional cricketer is naive. It fundamentally misses the point. More simply, I could not base such an important personal decision on the dreams of others. Playing cricket was no longer for me, and I wanted to do something else.

I would watch Stokes, Root and Cook with admiration and alienation as they conjured up a hypercompetitive spirit
On the other hand, there was an assumption that the only common-sense reason to stop playing would be to go into the City and make more money than cricket could offer. But this neither captured my lingering trouble with the professional game, nor explained my desire to change paths: money is very good as a county cricketer, and played no part in my thinking.

These analyses, though, were in the minority. In general, reactions were considered and sympathetic, and a third narrative developed: that the problem was an intellectual gap between me and my team-mates. While this was flattering, once again I felt it missed the mark: there are lots of intelligent cricketers, many cleverer than I am.

Instead, I would argue that, if there was a separation, it arose out of my struggle to come to terms with a set of seemingly prosaic ethical demands – values and principles governing everyday conduct – that professional cricket threw up. The need to be permanently competitive, for example, was something I found difficult.

In Bangladesh and India in 2016-17, I would watch Ben Stokes, Joe Root and Alastair Cook with admiration and alienation as they conjured up a hypercompetitive spirit, whether on the cricket field or at the hotel ping-pong table. It goes without saying that competition is a foundation of sport: to be competitive is clearly an advantage, providing the mental framework to maximise the chances of success. Yet as my career progressed, I felt uncomfortable conducting myself in this way.

This feeling emerged, in part, from a broader left-wing perspective, which informed my approach to life, and was both a cause and an effect of my studying Social and Political Sciences at university, and of my choice of master’s thesis: African-American self-defence during the Civil Rights era.


Shakib Al Hasan dismisses Ansari during the second Test between Bangladesh and England, October 30, 2016

Against this background, I grew wary of a professional culture that treated the uncompromising pursuit of victory as essentially virtuous. I had not always been such a sceptic. I revelled in my competitiveness as I was growing up. I’m sure it contributed to any success I did achieve. But as the years passed, I tired of the effort it required, and carried my growing suspicion of the merits of competition into my cricket. I would try to subvert this drive in small ways – such as taking pleasure in the success of an opponent – and avoid competition outside work. But I could not maintain it.

The sight at close quarters of Virat Kohli living every ball as if it were his last highlighted an absence that had been building within me. I also wrestled with, and eventually started to resent, the individualising tendency of the professional game. Like the will to compete, this is a defining feature of cricket. Indeed, what distinguishes cricket from many team sports is the productive tension between the individual and the group. Yet this was supplemented by an ethos of individualism to which I responded grudgingly.


Ansari admired Virat Kohli’s mental will to ‘live every ball as if it were his last’

The mantra of personal responsibility and a no-excuses culture that went with every act, for instance, were distortions of the reality confronting me every day. And, however glib it may sound, the fact that dependency – on others, on luck, on privilege – represented the rule rather than the exception made the pervasive logic of the individual steadily more jarring. Put plainly, I feel cricketers are heavily reliant on their circumstances and the people around them. Yet this cannot be acknowledged, for fear it would suggest they lack the toughness to take responsibility for their actions.

This perspective may have been a defence mechanism designed to compensate for my limits as a cricketer. And I’m aware of the virtues of this ethic – it drives players to see themselves as the principal authors of their own destiny, and to work harder to improve. Still, as I developed an aversion to it, the problem of my long-term motivation grew in equal measure.

Other factors played into mydissatisfaction. Like many cricketers, I struggled with the way the job pulled me away from friends and family. Similarly, the cycle of scrutiny, failure and judgment, occasionally in the public domain, was a challenge that never quite let up. While neither led me to end something to which I had dedicated most of my life, their accumulation created the circumstances in which retirement – even at a young age – felt right.


The tour of Bangladesh and India was a moment of crystallisation. Reading through old letters and watching home videos of me as a young boy, I was reminded that playing Test cricket had always been my ambition. My three caps still fill me with pride and joy. Even so, it was through touring that the factors I have described coalesced. Being in the presence of other players with an insatiable appetite to compete and better themselves as cricketers was disarming and revealing, since it forced me to challenge my own position.

The trip also raised questions I had not, until then, had to confront. I had avoided social media, for example, because I felt neither qualified to try to influence others casually with my views, nor comfortable with the self-promotion it inevitably involves. At the same time, I am committed to advancing social and economic justice, and the chance to do so by harnessing the exposure of an England tour was something with which I had to grapple.

Playing for England provides cricketers with a great opportunity to make themselves heard, but limits what they can say
I remember having a long, stimulating conversation during the trip with Mark Ramprakash, our batting coach, and coming away with a sense of the potential that a successful cricketing career might provide. Equally, I was aware that this potential was constrained by the need to avoid any controversy in relation to non-cricketing matters, as the ICC’s decision to ban Moeen Ali from wearing a “Save Gaza” wristband in 2014 exemplified.

In short, playing for England provides cricketers with a great opportunity to make themselves heard, but limits what they can say. I concluded that, even in the unlikely scenario of a long international career, this trade-off between exposure and authenticity was not one I wanted to make.

Of course, other jobs come with trade-offs, frustrations and constraints, which in part explains why I agonised so much. I say “in part” because for the previous seven years I had also taken huge pleasure in being a cricketer. I could not have given it up lightly. I’m sure I will miss the feeling of bowling an unplayable delivery, the satisfaction of winning a Championship match, and the excitement of taking part in a Twenty20 game at a packed Oval. I will miss even more the feeling of being a small part of something with a long, powerful history, such as Surrey, and of being a large part of a team, with its friendships and shared moments.

It is telling that in the weeks and months after retiring, I went back to The Oval many times to catch up with old team-mates, and watch them play, as a Surrey supporter. But it is equally significant that I did not feel the urge to do so as a player.


Zafar Ansari played 68 first-class matches for Cambridge, Surrey and MCC, and three Tests and a one-day international for England. He works for the charity Just for Kids Law, and is completing a law conversion degree.

The Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack 2018 is the 155th edition of ‘the bible of cricket’. Order your copy now.

https://www.wisden.com/almanack/left-field-decision-calling-day-25-zafar-ansari
 
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