Moeen Ali retirement: Has Moeen Ali retired from international Cricket?

Moeen Ali retirement: Returning after a three-match absence, Moeen Ali turned up with the ball for CSK in what is their must-win match.

During the 49th match of the ongoing 15th season of the Indian Premier League at the MCA Stadium in Pune, Chennai Super Kings (CSK) restricted the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) to 173/8, after the latter got off to a brilliant start in the Powerplay.

In what is a must-win match for CSK, their skipper MS Dhoni elected to field first after winning the Toss, and included their retained pick for the season – Moeen Ali in the playing eleven, replacing the Kiwi all-rounder Mitchell Santner.

After the RCB opening duo of skipper Faf du Plessis (38 off 22) and former skipper Virat Kohli (30 off 33) got off to their best start in the season, with a 63-run stand off 7.2 Overs, it was Moeen who drew first blood, as he got rid of du Plessis off the second delivery of his match.

Again, in his second Over itself, he dismantled Kohli’s stumps with a beautiful, classical off-spinning delivery to leave him dumbstruck at the amount of turn Moeen got off the pitch.

Coming back post recovering from an ankle injury, the English all-rounder returned with his bowling figures of 4-0-28-2.

Moeen Ali retirement

The English all-rounder, at the age of 34 last year, announced a sudden retirement from Test Cricket, in order to focus and prolong his career in the White-ball format for England.

He remains to be an integral part of England’s ODI and T20I squad.

The Southpaw batter scored 2,914 runs across 64 Tests at an average of 28.29, with the help of 14 half-centuries and 5 centuries. He also managed to scalp 195 wickets across 112 innings, at an average of 36.66.

Moeen, in fact retired falling just 86 runs and 5 wickets short of becoming only the 15th player in Test history to score 3,000 runs and claim 200 wickets.