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“It’s a horrible feeling to come to terms with because you are playing for your country, you love playing cricket for England and it’s your life”
England off-spinner Graeme Swann has admitted that it was a “horrible feeling” when he announced his retirement midway through the recently concluded Ashes series against Australia.
Swann called it quits after Australia took an unassailable 3-0 lead at the end of the third Test in Perth.
Swann explained that his body could no longer keep up with the demands of international cricket and that his elbow never felt the same after his surgery last year.
“Quite simply, I was awful,” he said on the BBC Radio Five Live programme, Not Just Cricket. “Whenever I bowled in the past, I could always get a lot of revolutions on the ball, dip and trouble most batsmen I bowled at.
“But from the outset of the tour, in the warm-up matches, I just couldn’t do it. After my second elbow operation, I’ve never really got the same revolutions I got before it, but it just [deteriorated] and I really felt powerless to tie people down.”
Swann had a horrendous time in the Ashes as he only managed to take seven wickets at a dismal average of 80.
“In Adelaide, I was getting hit for six by a rabbit who bats at No. 11,” he said. “It gets to a point that you realise you are hindering the team. You are not helping them in any way.
“It’s a horrible feeling to come to terms with because you are playing for your country, you love playing cricket for England and it’s your life, but to actually come to that conclusion is possibly the most sobering decision I have ever had to make. It was horrendous.”
Swann also insisted that batsman Kevin Pietersen played no part in his decision to retire.
“It will probably surprise people to hear that the changing-room was not divided,” he said. “It was remarkably calm. People just knew we were not performing and they were doing whatever they could to improve that.
“He’s had his moments in the past where he certainly has been divisive in the dressing-room, but to be fair to Kev, since coming back from his ‘reintegration’ he has been much improved.”