West Indies all-rounder Dwayne Smith announces international retirement

Dwayne Smith, the West Indian all-rounder has taken the executive decision to take the plunge into retirement after almost 14 years of playing international cricket. Smith is now 35 and will continue playing in the domestic T20 Leagues across the world. He currently is contracted to teams in the Indian Premier League, the Big Bash League, and even the NatWest T20 Blast. He has been quite tremendous with both bat and ball in recent times for almost all the sides he has played for.

Being an opening batsman, Smith made his claim to fame in the 2003/04 West Indies cricket season when the West Indies toured South Africa. He came into the series and made his debut as well when Marlon Samuels had to head back home after suffering an injury. He played in the New Year’s series in 2004 and was able to nail down his place in the side despite the Windies losing out on the series 3-1.

He became an integral part of the side as an opener as well, something that was quite clearly a position that was tailor-made for him. His 10 Test matches might have come to an end in 2006 after which he never donned the whites of West Indies again, but the fact was that he had a far more successful ODI and T20I career with both bat and ball.

With 105 ODIs and 33 T20Is under his belt, Smith has been quite amazing with the bat. He was a few hundred runs shy of 3000 international runs while a major feature of his batting was his aggression and ability to hit the ball a country mile despite the nature of the wickets. He was also a handy medium pace bowler with the odd uncanny off-cutters and ability to take wickets with reverse swing as well.

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