South Africa’s opening batsman, Hashim Amla, has announced his retirement from all forms of cricket to focus on his coaching career. The 39-year-old, who recently joined the MI Cape Town team as a batting coach for the SA20 league, has also informed the Surrey Country Club that he will not be playing for them in the 2023 County Championship.
During his two-decade-long career, Amla amassed 34,104 runs across all formats, including 9,282 runs in 124 test matches, which is the second-highest for South Africa behind Jacques Kallis. He also scored 28 centuries and a best score of 311 not out against England at The Oval in 2012, which was also South Africa’s first triple-century in tests.
In white-ball cricket, Amla had a successful career as well, scoring 8,113 runs including 27 hundreds in 181 ODIs and 1,277 runs in 44 T20Is. He quit international cricket after South Africa’s campaign in the 2019 ODI World Cup and retired from test cricket in the same year after a match against Sri Lanka at Gqeberha in February, ending a 20-year career that spanned from 2004 to 2019.
Amla has previously represented several teams in his career, including Derbyshire, Hampshire, Nottinghamshire, Essex and Surrey, as well as Kings XI Punjab in the Indian Premier League and Kwa-Zulu Natal, Dolphins, and Cape Cobras in South Africa’s domestic competitions.
