Cricket News: Ben Stokes following Eion Morgan’s early retirement, Is it the trend adopted by English cricketers to retire early?

However, whenever a great international player, irrespective of his nationality, decides to draw the curtains on his career, it always saddens fans worldwide. 

The out-of-blue retirement announcement of Eoin Morgan from international cricket and Ben Stokes' retirement from One Day Internationals have left fans and the cricket fraternity pondering whether Englishmen tend to retire prematurely. Eoin Morgan, age 35 and Ben Stokes, being 31-year-old, took the brave decision. 

Let's look at the retirement age of the top five players from the top three nations, India, Australia and England. We see the retirement age of English players is considerably less in comparison to Indian or Australian players. While Indian legends like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, and MS Dhoni retired at 38, Australian stars Ricky Ponting retired at 37, Adam Gilchrist, Mark, and Steve Waugh retired at 36, in contrast to English players like Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen retired at 32 and 33 respectively.  

Except for James Anderson and Stuart Broad, the early retirement trend is much more noticeable in any group of English players you pick. Alastair Cook was going strong with his tally of more than 12000 runs and was expected to surpass Sachin Tendulkar's 15000 runs, but the cricket fraternity was in shock with retirement at the age of 33, admitting that he lost that fire and was tired of the grind. This came in the year when his average dropped below 30 for the first time in his career. And this poor form was speculated to trigger his decision to retire. On the other hand, Sachin Tendulkar, in his career, got down to an average of 20 around five times but made a strong comeback every time. 

Too many similarities, Eoin Morgan's decision to retire came after his struggle with the form to perform up to the team's needs. He went through a lean patch for quite a long time and failed to revive even with the help of the domestic league. And with the World Cup a few months away, he called curtains to his career. While his reason was his struggle to perform, 31-year-old Ben Stokes' decision came after failing to manage his workload and do justice to the role in the format. ECB is believed to manage workload and look after the well-being of its players through various policies like the rotation policy. Still, the players giving up so easily on their careers early in life is a matter of concern.

Apart from poor form and workload, politics has also been marked as a reason for the early retirement of legendary players like Kevin Pietersen. The outspoken Pietersen was axed from the contract by England Cricket Board following the team's nightmare winter tour to Australia in 2014. 

Overall, English players have many weighty reasons to take the decisions that outpower the will to continue playing the international game. The presence of county cricket also acts like a cushion for a few to ease the phase of leaving cricket. Had these players continued playing, the cricket world would have many other big records named after English players