Brendan Taylor. Age 29. Retired. Signed off this Saturday with 138 runs on the bat, against a formidable India. The stadium, his opponents in the field, his dressing room and the entire world in attendance on Twitter stood up in ovation. It was a special knock by a special cricketer in a very special match — the last international of his short career with his convulsing country Zimbabwe.
You would say this is no age to retire. This isn’t women’s tennis after all. This is cricket. You start maturing with the bat at this age, you enter the golden peak of your career curve in these years. Not so for Brendan though. Not so for many other players of his troubled country, this cricketing logic. Brendan’s duel with himself and with the “fierce love I’ve for my country” as opposed to the “commitment to my children’s future” took him 11 long years to quit.
Brendan, like the rest of his imploding team, has been through the rough and tumble of his nation’s economic and political slide into collective insanity, into penury, lawlessness and anarchy, into a situation when looking into the future of any sport was not even on the policy radar of a country with much bigger and more serious battles to fight — like the falling worth of the Zimbabwean dollar, which today stands at a ridiculous ZWD 362 to US$1.
Zimbabwe’s cricket signifies this turmoil. It has gone through pink-slips, no salary phases, white player walkouts and even international isolation. It has lost players to other countries and the better paying cricket counties. Under the long misrule of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwean cricket, like all other strands of his nation’s life, had its backbone broken but Brendan stayed through all this. He’s an exceptional cricketer, as he showed in his last match against India, cleaning out all its bowlers with equanimity and class, often compelling Dhoni to rush in with words of wisdom for his armsters.
Two back-to-back centuries and second on the list of top run-getters in this tournament after Sangakkara and ahead of AB de Villiers is sterling achievement for a stand-in skipper of a team that’s going back early, that got bludgeoned by Chris Gayle, controversially lost to Ireland and was beaten by South Africa and Pakistan.
But that did not dim Taylor’s acumen with the bat in his last one. He stirred up the Indian quicks and went after the spinners, sparing no one. Ravindra Jadeja was the worst hit, going for two sixes and three boundaries in one over when Taylor decided to accelerate. His 50 came in 64 balls and the next 88 runs in only 46. He made his century taking 99 deliveries.
Taylor decked up his special 110-ball 138 with 15 boundaries and five sixes that left all Indian players stranded. The beauties off Taylor’s bat, floating over the long off and square leg boundaries were lusty, textbook correct, powerful and clean. This was the first time that the Indian spinners were made to look ordinary with Ashwin showing up on the scoreboard for 1/75 in 10 overs and Jadeja going wicketless for 71 runs.
It was, indeed, a special knock. It came with a special statement — ‘for me and my country’. This one is for Zimbabwe cricket which Brendan said will regroup, survive and bloom now that the most difficult phase seems to be over. He, however, won’t be there, at least for three years by which time much water would’ve flown down the Victoria Falls to be ready for change.
But this Saturday, when Taylor walked out of the middle of Eden Park, falling to Mohit Sharma and caught by Shikhar Dhawan, the stands, mostly full of Indians, gave a standing ovation. Shikhar, Kohli and Rahane ran up to congratulate him. He looked back at the crowd, the bursting stands, raised his bat in acknowledgment and walked into the sunset when he should’ve been walking into the sunrise of Zimbabwe’s cricket.
Tears were a natural corollary to the occasion. But he controlled them, much like he had curbed his desire to represent his country. Family and finances, he says, are issues that can’t always be ignored, what with two children growing up fast. For now, Taylor has seen currency in county cricket and, after a serious deliberation with his wife, has joined the Nottingham county for three years, contractually signed to not be on any hue of national duty for those well-paid years.
Will he be backIJ His teamsters are wanting him to, much like Kumar Sangakkara’s are. But decisions like this are difficult to reverse. And Brendan, whose wife had just returned from New Zealand to Zimbabwe before this big match, can only hide his emotions for now — and walk in quite another direction.