Mike Powell announces retirement

Michael Powell, the Kent batsman, has announced his retirement. The 36-year-old, who spent the majority of his career with home county Glamorgan, will return to Wales at the end of the season and take up a position with consultancy firm Thomas Carroll PLC.

Powell has featured only a handful of times for Kent this season, despite scoring 695 first-class runs at 40.88 last year. In a 16-year career, he made more than 13,000 runs and his best score of 299 remains the second highest in Glamorgan's history. Despite that, he was not offered a new contract by Glamorgan in 2011 and expressed his disappointment at having to leave the Welsh club.

"I have had a wonderful career and I owe a lot to many people within cricket," Powell said. "I enjoyed an extremely rewarding career at Glamorgan and have also relished the opportunity to play for Kent over the last two seasons.

"I would like to thank everyone for their continued support throughout my career, including supporters at both at Glamorgan and Kent. I have a number of exciting opportunities on the horizon, and look forward to moving on to the next stage of my career."

Powell came into England contention in 2004, when he was called up to the one-day squad as cover, and toured with the Lions a year later but was never capped, despite amassing 1327 runs in 2006, when he was named Glamorgan's player of the year. In 2007, he suffered complications during surgery to remove a rib - subsequently buried at Sophia Gardens - but recovered from a life-threatening blood clot to continue his playing career.

Graham Johnson, Kent's chairman, said: "Mike has helped Kent through a transition period, and true to his approach to cricket over a number of years, has done so in a very positive way, adding to all aspects of Kent Cricket. I hope he finds time to come back to see the fruits of what he has helped establish, he will always be welcome."