Australian Veteran Brad Hodge Announces Retirement

Australia’s veteran batsman has decided to bring down curtains on his cricket career which spanned well over two years. The right-handed batsman will bid adieu to the game after representing Melbourne club East Sandringham in their grade finals.

The 43-year-old missed the latter stages of the ongoing Big Bash League season with the Melbourne Renegades due to an infection following appendicitis surgery.

“This will be the end of the road,” Hodge told News Corp. “I’ll represent (Melbourne club) East Sandringham in the finals and that will be it for my cricket career.”

Hodge’s Test career is as unfortunate as it can get. He was surprisingly dropped from Australia’s Test side with a stunning average of 58.42 in five matches in 2005-06. He went on to play just one more Test that too in 2008 only play one further Test in 2008.

He also played 25 ODIs and 15 T20Is for Australia between 2005 and 2014, and has two international centuries – a magnificent unbeaten double-century in just his third Test match against South Africa in Perth in 2005, and a ton against the Netherlands in the 2007 World Cup.

Overall, he has scored more than 33,000 runs across the three forms of the game domestically and is the sixth highest run-scorer in T20s with 7406 to his name.

Meanwhile, the former Australia batsman also gave an insight on the illness that forced him to miss the Renegades’ final two group matches of the Big Bash League and their semi-final loss to Adelaide on Friday (February 2). Hodge had spent three days in hospital in Canberra prior to the Renegades’ game against Sydney Thunder, where he had his burst appendix removed before returning home to Melbourne. However, he was once again admitted in hospital after he suffered an infection which resulted in more surgery.

“Technology now keeps you up and about, but (the doctor) stated that 30-40 years ago it could have been the end of the road,” he said.

“Time-wise for me, I was probably fortunate I went in (to hospital) on the Saturday in Melbourne. If I’d left it another 24 hours it could have been a lot worse. The surgeon didn’t paint a great picture of what was happening inside there,” he added.

The veteran batsman went on say that he was “devastated” after the doctor told him he would not recover in time to play for the Renegades.

In a couple of months time, Hodge will be seen plying his trade in the Indian Premier League. The Australian, who had coached Gujarat Lions in the last two seasons, will coach Kings XI Punjab in the forthcoming season which gets underway in April.

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