Moeen Ali announces retirement from Test cricket

The 34-year-old allrounder, who made his debut in 2014, took 195 wickets in 64 games, a tally that included five five-wicket hauls, and hit five Test hundreds

Moeen Ali is to retire from Test cricket, ending his career as England’s third-most successful spinner.

The 34-year-old allrounder, who made his debut in 2014 in the summer after the Ashes defeat in Australia that saw the retirement of his predecessor Graeme Swann, took 195 wickets in 64 games, a tally that included five five-wicket hauls.

Against South Africa at Lord’s in 2017, he took 10 wickets in the match, before claiming the first Test hat-trick by an English spinner since 1938 when he dismissed Dean Elgar, Kagiso Rabada and Morne Morkel in successive deliveries at the Kia Oval. Those performances were part of a series in which he scored 252 runs and took 25 wickets – one of just 24 occasions in Test history where a player has completed the double of 250 runs and 20 wickets.

When he first came into England’s red-ball side, he was better known for his batting; in 2013 – the year before his Test bow – he had scored 1,420 runs in first-class cricket, while averaging 59.16. Over the next seven years, he hit five Test centuries – four of which came during a golden period in 2016 against Pakistan and Sri Lanka in the English summer and that winter in India.

At times, he was maligned for the apparent limitations of his off spin, even if only 15 players have taken more Test wickets for England, while the manner of his dismissals became a source of frustration to some. He was not helped by his own flexibility; remarkably, he batted in every position between one and nine, though his average dropped significantly from 35.03 under the captaincy of Alastair Cook to 28.29 at the point of announcing the end of his Test career.

It means that England will likely choose between Jack Leach, Dom Bess and Matt Parkinson when the Ashes take place this winter. Moeen ended this summer as “first-choice spinner”, according to Joe Root,who spoke ahead of the cancelled Test match at Old Trafford.

^{Moeen Ali also hit five Test hundreds}

That was the latest chapter in his latter – more complex – years in England’s Test side, which were stunted by sporadic selections and periods out of consideration. He was dropped after the Ashes defeat at Edgbaston in 2019 despite taking 50 wickets in his previous 12 appearances and then subsequently lost his Test contract at the end of that summer.

“A lot of the time if we lose I feel I am one of the first guys to get the blame for it,” he told the BBC’s Cricket Social in the following January. “I found, yes, there have been days when I have not had good games, but I feel sometimes it is easy to point the finger at me.

“It did get to me and that was one of the reasons why I needed to step back from Test cricket. I felt like I was drained from it all. I do think that, but I have got to become a stronger person as well.

“A lot of people could see I probably needed a break. I felt fatigued and burnt out. I needed this break to recharge my batteries and work on a few things and just find that hunger and love for the game again.”

Between that interview and now, he has played four further Tests, taking 14 wickets and scoring 142 runs, including a rapid innings of 43 off just 18 balls against India in Chennai – the ninth-fastest ever in Tests by strike-rate for an innings of at least 25 runs.

At the end of that Test, though, he returned home from the tour as part of England’s rotation policy. He received an apology from Root after the England captain misspoke and suggested that the allrounder had “chosen” to leave early when, in fact, the decision had been pre-agreed as part of plans to avoid “bubble fatigue”. He would likely have featured on the previous tour of Sri Lanka at the start of the year but tested positive for Covid-19 on arrival and instead spent the trip in isolation.