Tracking Graeme Swann's exit

Such is the clarity of hindsight, it’s not difficult to isolate one of the moments when Graeme Swann realised he was no longer physically or mentally up for the challenges that cricket’s most unforgiving platform demands.

There was his forgettable outing in Adelaide where he twice surrendered his wicket in meek circumstances to Australia’s pace attack.

There was the savagery of the punishment he took from Shane Watson on the fourth morning in Perth, when the Australian all-rounder showed scant regard and treated Swann like he was the accounts director rolling his arm over in the office Christmas party parklands game (see video above).

And perhaps most tellingly, there was his reaction upon losing his wicket on the day the Ashes changed hands at the WACA.

This time not backing away from the quicks and parrying to slip, but unable to defend against his rival off-spinner Nathan Lyon and instead looping a simple bat-pad catch to short leg to leave England just two on-target deliveries from a third consecutive Test humiliation.

Almost before the catch was completed, Swann swiped his bat at the pitch not so much in frustration at losing the battle of the offies but – as seen in retrospect – confirming that the battle was truly lost and he had been again found wanting.

A notoriously combative cricketer – just ask any fielder who failed to prevent runs, let alone miss a chance from his bowling – Swann thrived on being able to lift himself for the big moments.

He was renowned for taking wickets in the first over of a spell.

For being a factor in conditions that didn’t necessarily suit spin bowlers. When the ball still carried the shine and hardness that suggested it should be in the hands of the seamers.

So it was when he found himself unable to exert influence at the time of the match when spinners are supposed to come into their own – in the latter half of Tests, as the pitch was wearing and batsmen under siege – that Swann made the self-assessment that his time had come.

And as is the case when a team is losing and every action is viewed through a lens of suspicion and self-preservation, it is the timing of the decision of a 34-year-old bowler with a notoriously wonky elbow rather than the announcement itself that has overshadowed the news.

If England had been three-nil in the ascendancy, the Ashes retained and their clearly-near-the-end spinner hanging up his stock ball to enable a changing of guard then he would be lauded as a consummate team man.

But as Stephen Waugh was want to note, there are no fairytales in the hard-nosed, over-scrutinised world of professional sport.

Fuelling the speculation that Swann chose to jump before he was shoved in favour of Monty Panesar from the starting XI for Boxing Day Boxing Day Test is the former off-spinner’s own spin on the chronology.

In the course of an 11-minute media conference today, Swann identified the moment at which clarity as to his playing future arrived as the end of the Perth Test when the Ashes were surrendered. Or more to the point, he corrected, midway through that match.

Then it was the latter stages of the second Test in Adelaide. And finally he claimed it was after England’s victory at The Oval at the end of the previous Ashes campaign on home soil earlier this year that he “knew more or less that time was coming up”.

But the lure of a fourth-straight Ashes win, one last triumph in Australia and the sportsperson’s ever-lasting belief that one final success can be dragged out of an aching body and a cluttered mind meant Swann allowed himself a final hurrah.

One too many, as it turned out.

He is not the first, nor will he be the ultimate cricketer to have gambled that self-belief and past glories can somehow slow, maybe even reverse the inevitable downturn of the form line as it tracks into a player’s mid-30s.

Ricky Ponting acknowledges that he should have read the signs earlier. Ian Chappell recalls looking at the Adelaide Oval clock on the first morning of a Sheffield Shield game wondering why time was passing so slowly only to be confronted by the reality that his work day was five minutes old.

Swann cites the realisation that most others who watched Watson destroy him in Perth had simultaneously reached for the timing of his sudden retirement - his inability to undertake a large Test match workload and still have the skill and stamina to tie batsmen down on wearing pitches.

Put simply, he could no longer fill the position description of a Test spinner and, consequently, the role must be vacated so someone else with the requisite skills can be employed.

Swann wants to be remembered as someone who played the game with a smile, and one who generated the same among his teammates, the media and cricket fans through his all-too-rare preparedness to poke fun at the game’s absurdities and reveal some of its characters.

“And as a bloke who walks when he nicked it,” he added pointedly, to chuckles from the press corps.

Unfortunately, as Swann has admitted effective immediately, not even the well documented frailties of ‘hot spot’ or ‘snicko’ will allow you to cheat time.