Vaughan to retire?

[wpdavid]

Ok maybe a little hasty....

but stats show he has most ever test match wins as captain...

Brearley 17 in 31 = 55%

Vaughan 26 in 51 = 51%

Ok Brearley slightly better percentage but Vaughan sustained for a longer period.

Brearley's years of captaining Middlesex probably made him the better captain, but Vaughan's test captaincy record was more impressive imo. Brearley never led against the best side in the world, and did lead against a number of sides weakened by Packer. Both owed rather a lot to their talismanic all-rounders tbf.

Au revoir Mick. A less messy ending would have been nice, but I'm glad he didn't get to play this summer.

 

[Richard]

Not altogether surprised to hear TBH, a shame, but perhaps inevitable. The reality is he's been a letdown for most of his career, never came close to the heights most expected, and the last few months have been a worst-case scenario.

Fortunately, he'll always have one of the sweetest memories of his and anyone's time to look back on, that being captaining the 2005 Ashes. And the way he fought back from injury after that was quite wonderful too, IMO.

 

[vic_orthdox]

I must have watched this 50 times.

I watched it about 12 times just then.

 

[vic_orthdox]

Oh, and his fielding in 2002/03 was almost as bad as his batting was good.

 

[tooextracool]

Will probably remember him most for delivering this classic line:

"Look at that lot celebrating a draw," at Old Trafford in 2005.

 

[Richard]

Oh, and his fielding was almost as bad as his batting was good.

Fix'd.

 

[aussie]

This is crazy hindsight. But maybe he should have never been captain, he may have scored 25 test hundreds..

 

[aussie]

I must have watched this 50 times.

It looks pretty average TBH, haa. I'm sure i've seen Vaughan with better cover drives than that..

 

[zaremba]

It looks pretty average TBH, haa. I'm sure i've seen Vaughan with better cover drives than that..

If you can find them, I'll watch them.

BTW I always remember one of the best parts of David Gower's batting, and one for which was famed, being his extra cover drive. But the highlights clips I've seen in recent years give the impression that he in fact didn't hit that many of them, and a vast proportion of his runs come through pulls through the leg side. Not sure why that is. Perhaps my marbles have gone.

 

[irfan]

A sad day for English cricket is all I could think of when i heard the news.

The right time for Vaughan to call it a day as it could have become a farce over the summer with the press if they went down the why didnt we pick Vaughan route!

But i just hope he is remembered for how great a player, a captain and most of all how good a man he is!

Englands greatest ever test match captain without dispute and 02/03 was arguably the best batsman in the world.

An absolute pleasure to watch at his best and a true touch of class.

Maybe Nasser Hussain is out of a job again??

Please Sky offer Vaughan a spot!!

AWTA. Could have envisioned a big hoo-haa if England did badly in the first test and some one like Bopara was to blame.

 

[BoyBrumby]

This is crazy hindsight. But maybe he should have never been captain, he may have scored 25 test hundreds..

Interesting topic for debate, if nothing else. He averaged 36.02 as captain & 50.98 in the ranks.

Probably too simplistic to say the captaincy affected his batting that much and he might well have tumbled from his 02/03 heights anyway, but a fair point.

 

[Richard]

This is crazy hindsight. But maybe he should have never been captain, he may have scored 25 test hundreds..

Never believed that myself. People forget that he'd been doing exactly what he did after getting the captaincy for 7 years before the 8 months of purple patch that gave people the impression that the captaincy had stopped said purple-patch.

However... one thing I doubt many would now dispute (plenty still did at the time) is that he should never, ever have been ODI captain. Had someone else been given the armband in 2003 (who? Well, I can't think of anyone. Can you?) then it's interesting to speculate on what might've happened. Would he still have been Test captain at some point? For the answer to be "no" seems inconceivable, but remember - a butterfly flapping its wings may not actually induce hurricanes, but the metaphor exists for a reason.

 

[oitoitoi]

A sad way for him to go out, I think the captaincy didn't help but that he was never going to maintain the kind of form he had and wouldn't have been a 50+ average player, he always seemed to struggle on the slower surfaces and I always felt his shot range was a little limited, one of the reasons he struggled so much at limited overs stuff. Was England's best player to watch since Gower IMO.

 

[tooextracool]

That (captaincy and Vaughan) is a theory I subscribed to for a very long time. However it simply doesnt explain why his FC record is so mediocre. At the end of the day, his test match record as captain is not too dissimilar to his FC record which to me suggests that like Hussey, he had a huge purple patch and then returned down to earth thereafter.

 

[aussie]

Never believed that myself. People forget that he'd been doing exactly what he did after getting the captaincy for 7 years before the 8 months of purple patch that gave people the impression that the captaincy had stopped said purple-patch.

Did it though? Almost as soon as he got the captaincy vs SA 03, i began to see a different Vaughan. His 156 vs SA was the last time Vaughan was at his super best best.

I was at OT, when he scored 166 in 05 & still thought he looked below par his 2002/03 Ashes best. Captaincy affected his batting ever so slightly.

If he has gotten 25 test hundreds, i reckon he could have been England All-time material.

However... one thing I doubt many would now dispute (plenty still did at the time) is that he should never, ever have been ODI captain. Had someone else been given the armband in 2003 (who? Well, I can't think of anyone. Can you?) then it's interesting to speculate on what might've happened. Would he still have been Test captain at some point? For the answer to be "no" seems inconceivable, but remember - a butterfly flapping its wings may not actually induce hurricanes, but the metaphor exists for a reason.

Word, i was very surprised ATT. Trescothick should have been made captain. But i guess they didn't give him because given he was the senior & only top ODI player batsman, thus the selectors probably didn't want to burden him.

 

[wpdavid]

Word, i was very surprised ATT. Trescothick should have been made captain. But i guess they didn't give him because given he was the senior & only top ODI player batsman, thus the selectors probably didn't want to burden him.

Plus his form with the bat had been absolutely shocking in the same series where MPV hit those 3 hundreds. They probably wanted someone who was comfortable with his own game to be in charge.

 

[The Sean]

If he has gotten 25 test hundreds, i reckon he could have been England All-time material.

Mate that's a quality example of stating the obvious - "If player x had scored more Test centuries than anyone else from his country, he'd probably be a contender for that country's All Time XI."

 

[dontcloseyoureyes]

Seeya later Mikey ya classy bastard.

 

[Richard]

Just in case it's passed anyone by, now confirmed by the man himself, not that I imagine anyone needed that. Speculation like this rarely crops-up for no reason.

It's a bit of a shame to retire mid-season, but I guess I can see what he means about not wanting to hold back the likes of Jonathan Bairstow. Just have to hope they profit from it.

 

[Richard]

Did it though? Almost as soon as he got the captaincy vs SA 03, i began to see a different Vaughan. His 156 vs SA was the last time Vaughan was at his super best best.

I was at OT, when he scored 166 in 05 & still thought he looked below par his 2002/03 Ashes best. Captaincy affected his batting ever so slightly.

Although that knock at Old Trafford wasn't an outstanding one (dropped and bowled by a no-ball off successive McGrath deliveries) there were occasional other knocks in the meantime where he did indeed recapture it. His two centuries in the summer of 2007; even his twin centuries at Lord's in the summer of 2004.

What in my view held Vaughan back was opening the batting, but even if he'd never been asked to do that, I very much doubt he'd have performed all that much better than he did. Even as a middle-order batsman he still disappointed on plenty of occasions.

As I say - if he'd been performing superlatively pre-captaincy for 4-5 years, then yeah, you could say the captaincy probably affected him. But he wasn't. He was performing exactly as he performed post-captaincy-appointment for 6-7 years, with a very brief 8-month purple patch at the last minute (without which he could conceivably have not even got the captaincy).

Word, i was very surprised ATT. Trescothick should have been made captain. But i guess they didn't give him because given he was the senior & only top ODI player batsman, thus the selectors probably didn't want to burden him.

There was even speculation Trescothick was on the road to retirement \ being dropped in early-2003. There really was purely and simply no candidate for the ODI captaincy with any remotely convincing case in 2003. Vaughan was appointed purely because it was hoped he'd go from dreadful to decent, which was simply never going to happen.