Injury forces Matt Machan to retire from cricket prematurely

Scotland batsman Matt Machan was forced to announce his retirement from professional cricket at the age of 26. Machan had a surgery on his troubled wrist last year but has failed to recover from the injury despite going under the knife.

Machan realized his dream of playing in the World Cup

Machan has represented Scotland in two World Cups. Overall he played in 23 ODIs averaging 33.36. His lone century in this format came in 2013 against Kenya in Aberdeen. Besides his batting, Machan was a useful off-spinner picking 9 sticks from 33 games. Apart from playing in international cricket, the left-handed batsman played for Sussex in the English County Championship.

“It is with great sadness and an extremely heavy heart that I have to announce my retirement from the professional game due to a wrist injury,” Machan said. “Following medical advice, my long-term health is most important to me and I have to take that into account.

“Playing for Scotland brings so much joy and pride to me and the thought of not being able to do that again is a very hard pill to swallow.”

Machan was a popular player at Sussex

Machan qualified for Scotland due to his Scottish mother in 2012 and made his debut the next year in Sharjah playing against Afghanistan. Machan joined Sussex at a tender age of 10 and went on to play in the second XI before promoting to the fist team. In 44 first class games, Machan has scored 2089 runs at 33.15 with 192 being his personal best. He scored 5 hundreds and 6 fifties in his career. His List A numbers were further impressive as he averaged 35.49 with the bat at a strike rate of 87.60.

The 26-year old last appeared for Sussex during the NatWest T20 Blast against Glamorgan in July 2016. Scotland captain Kyle Coetzer was sad to hear his teammate departing from the game at such a young age.

“I was gutted to hear about Matt’s unfortunate early retirement,” Coetzer said. “It is always a difficult time for any player to hear a teammate, colleague and most of all friend, has had to hang up his boots through injury, and it is a shock to the system.

“There have been several players who have stood out during my career for various reasons, Mach is most certainly on that list.”

At 26, his best years as a cricketer were ahead of him. He had finally started to come good but fate had other ideas.