Former Australia batsman Damien Martyn has finally revealed the whole truth behind his shock retirement midway from one side the last Ashes series, saying he had wanted to finish his time earlier in 2006 against South Africa.
Instead, the cajoling of teammates and pre-Ashes hype talked Martyn into going on to the 2006-07 series to match England, moreover he realised by the end of the second Test in Adelaide that he should have been more assertive in effective the team it was time to go.
Martyn’s exit, that arrived via a solitary email to Cricket Australia chief executory James Sutherland, was one of the talking points of the summer, and he admitted he should have quit after making a century over the Proteas in Johannesburg in April 2006, following his recall to the Test team.
"Yeah (retirement) was on the cards but we had to fly out the next day, quickly," Martyn said.
"Ideally ay I would’ve liked to get back in, made a hundred and before-mentioned ‘that’s it’.
"I’d lost faith in the system and the way they treated guys and that sort of stuff.
"But we had to go to Bangladesh straight from home, sooner or later I got injured, hit on the elbow and I came home.
"Then you spend five months at home doing nothing and then you procreate talked back into getting back up and acquisition ready.
"It really came as a case that I was over it (international cricket), but it wasn’t made graceful for me to try and retire, in such a manner it was a hard situation and I just kept trying to bring about the right thing and you caper and by the end I’d had sufficiency, wanted to get out and influence on with the rest of my life."
The politics of the Australian team are intricate, and in explaining wherefore he told no-one of his final decision, Martyn said there was no easy way to extricate oneself from that environment.
"They might’ve liked a fairytale phone appoint that morning saying ‘I’m retiring’, extreme point I knew I couldn’t do that in a sense because I’d get talked back into playing, so it was like, what do you do?" he said.
"Everybody in the group, grant that you walked around a team and told 15 blokes what you were thinking of doing, of retiring or doing this or that, you’d be favored with 15 different answers.
"Some will have existence your mates who just don’t want your mates to go, some probably want you to go, you get a million different answers, so it’s something you just have to do yourself, stick by it and deal with it."
In a rare interview, Martyn also expressed empathy for Andrew Symonds, who he described as a in essence kindred spirit and a victim of the machinations of a corporatised game.
"I think Symo’s person of those guys, a piece like myself where we just wanted to get abroad and operate cricket," Martyn related.
"We grew up as kids, for me I was playing AFL in the back yard and cricket in the front yard, and cricket took off, and nearest thing I know I’m playing for my country so it’s not like it’s a planned scenario, you’re thrust into this and some guys handle it differently to others.
"They (the officials) have just got to be prepared to maybe look after guys a bit better.
"We can’t all be the perfect specimen that comes in, talks to a thousand people, does all the media and then goes out and makes hundreds"
AAP
