I think this was inevitable, in a way I am surprised it has taken this long - rumours were circulating that he was about to pack it in when he had his first niggle this year but I think that carrot of a possible Ashes place just about kept him going.

In hindsight he should probably have retired when he gave up the England captaincy - I think I said on here at the time that it would be interesting to see how many players who had been on the central contracts for a few years would drift back into the county game once those contracts and test cricket have gone, and I think this sort of situation could become the norm when more players who have been centrally contracted for a while come to the end of their England days.

As for Vaughan himself I think he was the most elegant English batsman of his time, probably since Gower, and I really did enjoy watching him bat when he was playing well - even though he never really took to the 1 day game a century he scored at Old Trafford to knock Lancs out of the cup back in 2004(?) was one of the best I have seen live, full of sensational stroke-play in the traditional sense.

Not many batsman in recent years have handled the all-conquering Aussies as he did (averages about 48 in Ashes tests IIRC) and even though his batting suffered when he took on the England captaincy you could hardly say it affected us given his record doing that.

It would have been nice to see him stick around and help bring some of the young batsmen at Yorkshire on (the likes of Gale, Sayers, Lyth, Bairstow etc could pick up a lot from spending a year or so around him).

I presume that in the very short term most of his time will be taken up with crying.

He'll do work for Kleenex.

A word class batsman
A world class captain

Sadly, neither of those happened at the same time, but as I've read elsewhere, it was like he took on the Aussies single handed back in 2003/4, and his captaincy was one of the main reasons we won the Ashes in 2005.

Shame he wasnt allowed a send off yesterday. Typical Yorkshire negative attitude. At any other county the coach would probably be thinking "Get him in, let him have a standing ovation and he'll probably play out of his skin" We just expect the worst.

I like Michael Vaughan, I think he was a fine batsman and a fine captain but I think we need to be careful about going overboard with the praise. He was a very good batsman for a 12 month period around 2002, he was a very good captain who presided over a successful England team for about a two year period 2003-05. Comparitively brief on both counts.

Agree with all of that. His batting in the 03/04 series was nothing short of world class, as good as you could ever wish to see. Also his cpataincy during the 2005 Ashes was outstanding and I certainly don't think we would have won it with any other captain in charge.

Harsh he played well as a player in the 2005 ashes series. He hit 166 IIRC in the first innings at the Old Trafford test.

Good player, great captain and has a big future as a coach IMO.

Didn't he score a 100 in both innings at OT?

He hit the first century of the 2005 Ashes series, but he'd been largely poor up until that point. When he took on the captaincy his average was hovering around 50, when he finished it was something like 41.44. I think that tells its own story.

I'm not saying he didn't play well as captain, but I don't think he was world class. Nothing wrong in that, very few players are. I just feel that his form prior to getting the top job, especially in Australia, was something that left him.

I'm not knocking the man, far from it, I just feel he didn't combine the 2 roles at the very, very top of his game.

No...166 in the first innings (then getting out to a daft shot to Katich) and then 14 in the second.

Still a bit of a shame for him to have to retire...how do Yorkshire fans feel that it would appear that he's only retiring because he can't get back in the England squad and doesn't want to scratch around at County level??

Im not saying that is the reason, just how it appears to some