Venugopal Rao announces retirement from all forms of cricket
Former India international - Venugopal Rao - made public his decision to hang up his boots and quit all forms of cricket 13 years after his last outing with the Indian team. Rao scored a total of 7081 runs in first-class cricket and played for the Indian team in 16 ODIs where he scored 218 runs.
37-year-old Andhra Pradesh batsman Venugopal Rao has announced his desire to quit all forms of cricket having last played for the Indian national team back in 2006. Rao earned the title of the first Indian "super sub" in ODI cricket since making his debut in 2005. The former Deccan Chargers cricketer played a large part of his career for his home Andhra Pradesh in first-class cricket and then went on to play for India between 2005-06.Â
However, Rao has also played for Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat between 2007 and 2015 before returning to play for Andhra between 2009 and 2012. Venugopal grabbed headlines after smashing a career-best 228 not-out against England A as helped South Zone overhaul a fourth-innings target of 501 which is the fifth highest successful chase in a first class cricket. That innings at Gurgaon in 2004 against an English attack that boasted the likes of Simon Jones, Sajid Mahmood and James Tredwell earned him an India ODI debut against Sri Lanka the following July.Â
Rao made 121 first class appearances the domestic scoring a total of 7081 first class runs at an average of 40.93 including 17 hundreds. He also played 65 IPL games for Deccan Chargers, Delhi Daredevils and Sunrisers Hyderabad between 2008 and 2014 and was part of the title-winning DC team in 2009.