Retirements That Hurt

[Daemon]

From this era it definitely feels like Kallis to me. Absolute giant and it's a huge drop in quality in terms of the batsman and 5th bowler replacing him. SA definitely haven't been doing well since he left either.

Did Bradman's retirement affect his team's results much?

In terms of which retirement hurt the most emotionally it's Zaheer for me. After all those constant injuries the dude put in months of effort with a specialist to get fitter, a first for an Indian cricketer afaik, but it was too little too late. Was hoping he'd make a comeback proper and it would help inspire others to get their **** together but alas.

 

[Gob]

Close call between Kallis and Warne

 

[StephenZA]

From this era it definitely feels like Kallis to me. Absolute giant and it's a huge drop in quality in terms of the batsman and 5th bowler replacing him. SA definitely haven't been doing well since he left either.

I just made a comment elsewhere that G.Smith was slightly bigger for SA at the time.... Kallis was expected and had become less of a lynch pin for SA, but the loss of both leadership, and grit at the top of the SA order, unexpectedly, has hurt SA much more recently

 

[91Jmay]

Graeme Swann? Gargantuan drop off (as much as I love Moeen). We bowled Scott Borthwick in the first game after Swann.

 

[cnerd123]

Misbah's retirement is going to really hurt Pak.

 

[Jono]

Murali? Herath isn't a bad replacement though I guess.

Sanga and Mahela in quick succession is brutal for Lanka too

 

[harsh.ag]

Nari Contractor and Andy Lloyd

 

[OverratedSanity]

Nari Contractor and Andy Lloyd

Booooooo

 

[GIMH]

Graeme Swann? Gargantuan drop off (as much as I love Moeen). We bowled Scott Borthwick in the first game after Swann.

No we didn't.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Murali? Herath isn't a bad replacement though I guess.

Sanga and Mahela in quick succession is brutal for Lanka too

Yeah was going to say Sanga/Mahela.

Also, West Indies were already falling quick but after Ambrose retired they fell off a cliff. Didn't help that Walsh went a few months later as well.

 

[harsh.ag]

Lillee and Chappell in the same year were big

 

[OverratedSanity]

Lillee and Chappell in the same year were big

Lillee, Chappell, Marsh. Same match.

 

[Niall]

Misbah's retirement is going to really hurt Pak.

Younis I think will be the bigger loss as he is the better batsman and probably more likely to do well overseas rather than Misbah. Obviously yeah still a big loss, but I think Fawad will slot in the Misbah role decently enough. No surprise sixes from Fawad though.

 

[91Jmay]

No we didn't.

Ah did we go Panesar? Test after that then.

 

[cnerd123]

Younis I think will be the bigger loss as he is the better batsman and probably more likely to do well overseas rather than Misbah. Obviously yeah still a big loss, but I think Fawad will slot in the Misbah role decently enough. No surprise sixes from Fawad though.

Its the leadership Pak will miss more than anything.

 

[Moss]

Richard Hadlee's retirement probably hurt more than Murali's, though when I started following cricket it seemed like Danny Morrison could have played the Herath role but for umpteen catches being dropped off his bowling.

Sunil Gavaskar in 1987. Though SRT came in to the side two years later, I don't think India's batting had any real sort of backbone (away from home at least) until Dravid and Ganguly started to develop in test cricket and India's batting unit was one to be feared.

More than Kallis I'd say Graeme Smith has been badly missed both as an opening bat and a captain.

Ridley Jacobs was the one player to consistently emerge with credit during the 1998-2004 period when Lara took on the captaincy (and then got it back from Hooper later). For me, no West Indian keeper-batsman since has measured up, not even Ramdin.

 

[JTemperance]

West Indies lost Greenidge, Richards, Marshall and Dujon pretty much in one go around 1991. They were all past their prime but there weren't any better replacements.

 

[kiwiviktor81]

Andrew Jones and Martin Crowe retiring around 94/95 left us embarrassingly weak in the batting stakes for a few years.

It would be as if KW and Taylor retired at the same time right now.

Shane Bond hurt too, we went from the leader of our bowling attack averaging < 21 to averaging in the low to mid 30s.

 

[Moss]

Marcus Trescothick is another name that come to mind. Since he left England haven't had a free scoring one-day opener as good. Even in tests until maybe the 2010 ashes a recurring complaint was that the Cook-Strauss opening combination just didn't put enough pressure on the opposition bowlers.

 

[Furball]

Andrew Strauss and Sourav Ganguly both took ages to replace in their respective lineups. England still haven't properly replaced Strauss and have given Cook 8 different opening partners in 12 Test series since then.

India took an age to replace Ganguly at 6, IIRC Yuvraj, Badrinath, Raina, Kohli and Pujara all spent a bit of time in and out of the team in the 3/4 years between Ganguly retiring and Dravid and Laxman retiring. Funnily enough, it's only really since all of the old guard left that India seem to have largely settled on a new batting lineup.