JP Duminy retires from domestic cricket

JP Duminy has retired from domestic cricket, Cape Cobras coach Ashwell Prince confirmed. Duminy, however, will continue to play T20 cricket for South Africa and in international leagues, including the Mzansi Super League. Duminy, 35, had announced in March that he will retire from ODIs after the 2019 World Cup.

Duminy has not played first-class cricket for the Cobras for three years, but had been part of Cobras' List A campaigns, up to and including his participation in the Momentum One-Day Cup this season. Having spent much of the summer on the sidelines, recovering from surgery on his injured right shoulder, Duminy returned to competitive cricket with the Cobras and was part of the squad that reached both the domestic One-Day and CSA T20 Challenge semi-finals.

Having played for provincial B and age-group sides, Duminy made his first-class debut with the senior Western Province side as a 17-year-old in February 2002, joining a team that included Herschelle Gibbs, Gary Kirsten, Jonathan Trott and Paul Adams, and sharing in a 43-run stand with Kirsten in his debut innings.

His first List A match for Western Province came the following season, in November of the same year. The teenage Duminy top-scored with 78 made at No. 4 in a 62-run win over Namibia in what was then called the Standard Bank Cup. He quickly established himself in the senior side, and was for several years a stalwart of the Cape Cobras side after Cricket South Africa adopted the franchise system in the 2004-05 season.

In 108 first-class matches, Duminy scored 6,774 runs, including 20 hundreds and two doubles, with his top score of 260 not out coming in his final first-class game for the Cobras at Boland Park just over three years ago. He has also scored 7,408 runs in 269 List A games at an average of 38.78.

While his rehabilitation and conditioning work on his right shoulder meant that Duminy could not be part of the early stages of Cobras' CSA T20 Challenge campaign, he returned to play in their last three matches, his last game for the Cobras being the semi-final defeat to Warriors in East London on Wednesday.