India all-rounder Irfan Pathan Retires from international Cricket

On Saturday, India all-rounder Irfan Pathan announced his retirement from all forms of cricket. He made his first-class debut 19 years back for Baroda in the 2000-2001 season of the Ranji Trophy.

India all-rounder Irfan Pathan Retires from international Cricket

Irfan Pathan is considered to be one of India’s most prominent swing bowler and might possibly remain available for franchise-based leagues overseas.

Even after retirement, he is going to carry on to be associated with Jammu and Kashmir as a mentor. Pathan said about his future plans, “I will keep contributing to Indian cricket, but it is always better if someone else takes my place in domestic cricket. There are lot of other things in store for me and I will keep focusing on them,”

Irfan, who last played a competitive game of cricket in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in February 2019, declared his decision to retire in a show on Indian cricket’s official broadcasters.

Talking about his career in cricket, Irfan Khan has been featured in total of 29 Tests (1105 runs and 100 wickets), 120 ODIs (1544 runs and 173 wickets) and 24 T20 Internationals (172 runs and 28 wickets).

In addition to that, he was part of the victorious Indian team at the 2007 World Twenty20 as well as he was the man-of-the-match in the final match that was held against Pakistan. Also, in the year 2013, Irfan was also a member of India’s ODI squad which won the Champions Trophy.

“Every time I visited Pakistan, I have returned with good memories. I first played there during the under-19 days and took nine wickets against Bangladesh — including a hat-trick — in an Asian under-19 tournament. Later, playing for the senior team, I performed really well,” Pathan said.

His one of the best performance, where he was recognised as one of the leading swing bowlers of his time was in the first over of the Karachi Test of 2006, where he took the hat-trick. In addition to that, he was also part of the Indian team that won the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup in 2007.

In Bangalore 2007, Irfan Pathan, apart from Sourav Ganguly and, Yuvraj Singh scoring a sparkling hundreds, he also managed to hog some part of the limelight with his maiden (and only) century against Pakistan. At that time, Irfan established himself as an all-rounder in international all-rounder. After that he was promoted to bat at No.3 regularly between the year 2005 and 2007.

During India’s tour of 2006, Irfan also became the second Indian after Harbhajan Singh to claim a Test hat-trick. Furthermore, his Test career went upwards when his all-round performance assisted India to register their first-ever Test win at the iconic Perth in the year 2008.

The pacer said, “It has been a great journey. I played cricket with all my heart and soul. I am really proud of it and when I look back, I feel happy with my achievements. It’s been a great career,”