Hamilton Masakadza on Tuesday (September 3) announced his decision to retire from all forms of cricket after the T20I tri-series in Bangladesh, also involving Afghanistan, slated for later this month.
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The burly right-hander started off his international career in 2001 and immediately made a mark on the international scene by scoring a hundred in his debut Test against the West Indies. He thus joined an elite list of players who were awarded the Man of the Match award in their debut game. He was also the then youngest to score a Test ton, a record later broken by Mohammad Ashraful.
Masakadza went on to play in 38 Tests for Zimbabwe. But it was white-ball cricket which saw his prowess most of the times. So much so that he retires as the fourth most capped player for Zimbabwe in ODIs behind the Flower brothers and Elton Chigumbura.
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Masakadza also tallied 5658 ODI runs from 209 games which again puts him fourth in the list of most runs for Zimbabwe in the 50-over format. Masakadza was handed over the captaincy in February but post the ban put on Zimbabwe Cricket board in July, the talisman batter had written to the sports minister to intervene. He had also hinted at dressing room conflicts in his letter.
The veteran batter also played 62 T20Is and scored 1529 runs at a strike rate of more than 115 with 10 fifties. Masakadza now is the second player to announce his retirement after the ICC ban with Solomon Mire being the first, in July.
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