The Ashes is one of the most coveted trophies in world cricket. It is generally regarded as a great stage to make a career and a name for oneself. But there have been players whose careers got over (retired or got dropped) after an Ashes series.
So here’s a look at 10 players from both England and Australia who finished their careers after an Ashes series.
#10 Sir Don Bradman (1948)
With a jaw-dropping career Test average of 99.94, Sir Donald Bradman is perhaps the greatest ever batsman to have walked on this planet. 29 hundreds (out of which 12 were converted into double tons), 13 fifties and 6996 runs in 52 Tests matches – these are staggering numbers.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Bradman was the world’s master cricketer, so far ahead of everyone else that comparisons became pointless.
Bradman though didn’t have the best of starts to his career as he scored 18 and 1 in his debut Test in the first Ashes Test in 1928/29, but he came back strongly later in the series scoring a couple of hundreds (in the third and the fifth Test).
But his debut series was just a glimpse of what he could do. In the return Ashes series in England in 1930 saw him shatter numerous record (making a few as well).
He scored 974 runs (the most in a Test series) in 7 innings at an average of 139.14, helping Australia regain the Ashes.
Not only in 1930, Bradman haunted England in every Ashes series. He played 37 Tests against England and scored 75% of his career runs against them. His 5028 runs in Ashes cricket is the highest by any player.
In 1948, he played his last Test against England where he needed to score just 4 runs to finish with a Test average of 100, but he fell for a second ball duck. But his last Test series was also a brilliant one, where he scored 508 runs capping off a staggering career.
#9 Graham Gooch (1995)
For a cricketer who scored a plethora of runs in all forms of the games he played in, Graham Gooch had a rather sedate Ashes record. He is one of those rare England cricketers who debuted and played his last game in the Ashes.He started with a pair on debut against in the 1975 Ashes and a string of low scores continued against Australia. It was only his 15th Ashes innings, he managed to score a fifty but inconsistency continued till the 1985 Ashes. But since that Ashes, he scored more than 400 runs in every Ashes that he played (except his last series) – including 673 in the 1993 edition.
[“Source-ndtv”]
