Michael Vaughan, former captain of England cricket team announced his retirement from professional cricket on Tuesday. Vaughan is the most successful England test captain. He has not played after resigning from captaincy post in August during the home series defeat to South Africa. 

His career has been marred by knee injury in recent times and the 34-year-old was not included in the squad for the Ashes series starting next week in Cardiff. He said in a statement that this is the right time to retire after having played for 16 seasons. He wished the England team success in the Ashes series. He said that winning the Ashes series in 2005 was the highlight of his career.

Vaughan’s record as captain in his 5-year stint is 26 wins, 11 defeats, and 14 draws, making him the most successful England captain in terms of wins. The 2005 Ashes series was a very closely contested one. England had won the Edgbaston test by only two runs. The 2005-series victory is certainly a feather in Vaughan’s cap.

His batting form started to decline in recent years. The 2002-03 Ashes series in Australia saw him amass 633 runs at an average of 63. He scored three hundreds in that series. England lost the series, though. He was looking forward to one last series against Australia. But he has scored only 147 runs in seven county championship innings for Yorkshire so far.

Ravi Bopara’s current form in tests after scoring three centuries against West Indies dashed Vaughan’s hopes of getting selected. Vaughan has scored 5719 runs in 82 tests at an average of 41.44 with 18 centuries, the highest being 197 against India at Trent Bridge in 2002.