Two days after being snubbed by national selectors, middle-order batsman Ambati Rayudu has chosen to sever all ties with cricket. Selectors overlooked Rayudu and chose Mayank Agarwal from outside the standbys list for the World Cup to replace an injured Vijay Shankar.
The 33-year-old Hyderabadi batsman wrote a mail to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Wednesday morning saying, "I have come to (the) decision to step away from the sport and retire from all forms and levels of the game."
His brief mail to the acting secretary Amitabh Chaudhary, General Manager (Cricket Operations) Saba Karim and CEO Rahul Johri added: "I would like to take this opportunity to thank the BCCI and all the state associations that I have represented which include Hyderabad, Baroda, Andhra and Vidarbha. I also would like to thank the two IPL franchises MI and CSK for their support. It has been an honour and privilege to have represented our country...It has been a wonderful journey of playing the sport and learning from every up and down it brought upon for the last 25 years..."
It was only last season that Rayudu decided to quit red-ball cricket to focus on white ball. He had, by then, settled into the Indian middle-order and was eyed as the potential No. 4 for the World Cup.
Given umpteen chances at that position in the bilateral ODI series leading to the World Cup, it was believed that Rayudu would be a shoo-in at the crucial position.
Until the selectors — chairman MSK Prasad, Debang Gandhi, Sarandeep Singh, Jatin Paranjape and Gagan Khoda — dropped the bombshell on April 15 by naming Shankar for that slot because he was a "three-dimensional player". Frustrated, Rayudu tweeted the next day: "Just ordered a new set of 3d glasses to watch the world cup".
Perhaps this did not go down well with BCCI and the selectors. A man of few words, Rayudu has not tweeted since.
As news about his retirement spread on Wednesday, he remained incommunicado. While he initially disconnected calls in from this scribe, he later took the call without saying a word. People who know him in Hyderabad said Rayudu was not taking anyone's calls.
"The selectors have been a complete disappointment this World Cup," said Gautam Gambhir, former India opener and now a member of Lok Sabha, "Rayudu's decision is because of them; their decision-making skills are to be blamed. The five selectors combined would not have made the runs Rayudu has in his career. I feel extremely sad. Rishabh Pant and Mayank Agarwal got selected amidst injuries; anyone in Rayudu's place would have felt equally bad."
His international career, comprising 55 ODIs from July 2013 to March 2019, has been a fluctuating one. The latest series against Australia at home earlier this year did not go all too well. But at the series before, in New Zealand, he played an innings of a lifetime, scoring a man-of-the-match performance of 90 at No. 4 in Wellington after his team was in the doldrums. He was doing adequately well to harbour hope of being a permanent fixture at No. 4 to anchor innings or play the role of a finisher, as the situation warranted.
But that was not to be. Rayudu has been Indian cricket's Destiny's Child. The talent he possessed as a batsman was phenomenal. So much so that when the National Cricket Academy picked him as a recipient of the first Border-Gavaskar Scholarship in the early 2000s, the then NCA chairman Rajsingh Dungarpur and U-19 coach Roger Binny had to summon his father from Andhra and convince him to send the teenager to Adelaide for a few weeks.
Rayudu led India comprising Robin Uthappa, Shikhar Dhawan, Dinesh Karthik, RP Singh and Suresh Raina to the semifinals of the ICC Under-19 World Cup in Bangladesh in 2004. However, for breach of conduct amounting to time wasting in the quarterfinal against Sri Lanka, he was suspended for the semifinal against Pakistan, which India eventually lost.
His emotions on the field sometimes crossed the line. In a Ranji Trophy match for Andhra, he was involved in a scuffle with Arjun Yadav. In an IPL game in 2016, he had an on-field spat with Mumbai Indians team-mate Harbhajan Singh. In 2017, he was involved in a heated argument and manhandled a senior citizen on the streets of Hyderabad while heading for training to the Rajiv Gandhi Stadium in Uppal.
To retire from all forms and all levels of the game at 33 may be a hasty decision. Rayudu was becoming a regular match-winner for Chennai Super Kings in IPL – having been bought in 2018 for Rs 2.20 crore – and formed a formidable partnership with MS Dhoni.
However, the emotionally-charged batter thought it was not worth it when forces worked against his goal of playing in a World Cup, especially after being in the reckoning till the very last minute.
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Given umpteen chances at that position in the bilateral ODI series leading to the World Cup, it was believed that Rayudu would be a shoo-in at the crucial position.
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