Lendl Simmons

When Lendl Simmons announced he was "closing this chapter of international cricket" in July 2022, he was 37. He was, he said, going to focus on franchise cricket for as long as he could after that - he continued till late 2023 before easing off.

Simmons was very much a part of the West Indies batting unit that dominated T20 cricket through the 2010s. The debut in the format had come in 2007 - he had made his ODI debut the previous year - on a tour of England, and he went on to play 68 T20Is, all the way up to October 2021. That period took in both West Indies World Cup wins, in 2012 and 2016. In 2012, Simmons was the only member of the 15-man squad to not get a game. In 2016, he played two games, but only after joining the squad as a replacement for the injured Andre Fletcher before the semi-final against India in Mumbai. He blasted India into submission two days after landing in the country, hitting a Player-of-the-Match-award-winning 82 not out in 51 balls. He then got a first-ball duck in the final against England.

T20 was definitely the format Simmons felt at home in the most, and he found a home in leagues across the world because of that, playing in every major league one can think of, and many forgotten ones. Overall, in 288 innings in 292 T20s, mainly as an opening batter, he hit 7756 runs at a strike rate of 119.19 and an average of 29.83.

At the biggest of those leagues, the IPL, Simmons was key to Mumbai Indians' success in 2015 and 2017, and scored a total of 1079 runs from 29 innings during his time there.

At the Caribbean Premier League, where he turned out for multiple teams including Trinbago Knight Riders, the Trinidadian's home team, Simmons was the highest run-getter (2629 from 91 innings, including 20 half-centuries) at the time of his international retirement - he hasn't played in the tournament since.

He also turned out in eight Tests and 68 ODIs but didn't quite reach the heights in those formats when compared to what he did in T20s. In Tests, he averaged 17.37 from 16 innings. While there were two centuries and 16 half-centuries in ODIs, all he accumulated was 1958 runs from 65 innings at an average of 31.58.

Shamya Dasgupta