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January 26, 2007

Nathan Astle, one of the longest serving Kiwi Cricketer has announced his retirement from International Cricket at Perth today. Lack of motivation has been cited as the reasons to call it quits by the 35-year-old Astle. He has decided to leave cricket at this stage to allow another player to have an opportunity just before the World Cup in March.

The right handed Canterbury and New Zealand batsman was part of the NZ team in the ongoing Commonwealth Bank Series in which he had two ducks, a 45 and a score of 1! Lou Vincent has been named as the replacement. Astle has been known to be a dangerous opening batsman in the One Day format of the game, he had scored as many as 16 centuries and 41 fifties in the 223 ODIs he had played. He has been a clean hitter of the cricket ball with his One Day Career containing 86 sixes! Astle had also cracked 11 centuries in the 81 Tests he had played. His entry in international cricket was in 1995. Besides being an attacking batsman at the top, Astle has been a very good medium pacer, known to persistently bowl on the stumps with nagging accuracy. He was very effective in getting the ball to reverse swing in both directions.

One of the most outstanding record that Astle holds is the 'fastest double century' which he had smashed against England in 2001/02. His double century had come in 153 balls. He has scored 4702 and 7090 runs in Tests and ODIs respectively with an average in the mid 30s. Astle is unlucky to end his career with 99 ODI wickets!

 

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