Sheldon Jackson steps down from domestic white-ball cricket for Saurashtra citing lack of enough opportunities.
Sheldon Jackson, the Saurashtra batter, has called time on his limited-overs career.
He ends his career with 2792 runs in 84 innings, with his undefeated 133 helping Saurashtra win their second Vijay Hazare Trophy in 2022 being the high point. In total, he hit nine hundreds and fourteen half-centuries.
Although the announcement was made at the Vijay Hazare Trophy, Jackson had been thinking about retiring for some time. Before Saurashtra’s December 31 match against Punjab, he informed the team management of his decision. Jackson hit his top score of 71 against Puducherry in their tournament opener, and he played in five one-day matches this season.
“It’d been at the back of my mind from even before the tournament and I kept taking it game by game, but before the Punjab match, I told the team, but they wanted me to bow out on the field,” Jackson told ESPNcricinfo. “It was a very gracious move from them and I’m really thankful for that gesture.”
Jackson was persuaded that he was done by Saurashtra’s success in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy T20 tournament, when they won six of seven group-stage matches to get to the quarterfinals.
“The way Saurashtra’s youngsters played during the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy convinced me my time was up,” he said. “I didn’t find it right to be blocking someone’s spot. At 37-38, even if I score 5000 runs, I wasn’t going to be in the reckoning for the national team. Or say I scored ten ducks, the worse that would’ve happened is I’d be out of the state team.
“In that sense, there was no scope for growth. What’s the point in me holding on to my spot when it wasn’t going to lead me anywhere? I rang up Jaydev Shah [the Saurashtra Cricket Association president, who is currently in Australia as the India team manager] and expressed my thoughts and then communicated it to the captain [Jaydev Unadkat] and the coach [Niraj Odedra].”
Jackson did not play in any of the Mushtaq Ali Trophy’s Twenty20 matches. It is thought that the team’s management had a strong desire to develop younger players. As it happened, several of them made their breakthrough, including Sammar Gajjar, Ruchit Ahir, and Jay Gohil.
“For the past two years, I hadn’t even been registering for the IPL auction,” Jackson said. “And in all honesty, the motivation for someone to be a part of SMAT. Especially if you’re not in the reckoning for the Indian team, is to get an IPL gig. If I wasn’t even in the auctions, it felt pointless to simply soldier on and block a spot.