Gilchrist announces retirement.

Oh what!?

And on Australia Day, too! That's just un-Orrrstrayan. It's a day when he should single-handedly be making a triple century while downing a few cold ones, wearing budgie smugglers and watching Neighbours re-runs from the 80s, and getting his hair mullet-ed.

Realistically, it's a shame. But I guess it'll make some of the radio and tv commentators happy, after they'd been whinging about Gilchrist not taking every single catch, not being acrobatic enough to join Cirque du Soleil, etc, etc. Obviously holding records and doing well just isn't quite good enough for some commentators. The lesson from that is to just try harder.

Still, he was the best wicketkeeper-batsman we've ever seen, I think, and definitely an incredibly exciting player to watch when he was batting freely. Still remember seeing him in one of his early one dayer at Adelaide Oval and talking about him replacing Healy in the team with some random drunk guy who later managed to get beer on me (and everyone else in the area) during the Mexican wave.

I think I'll rather miss that all (Gilchrist's cricket, that is, not the beer thing. Although the Mexican wave... Now there's something that's important to cricket!).