Flashback to 1978: David Gower pull his first ball in Test cricket – from Pakistan medium-pacer Liaqat Ali– four at Edgbaston. Over 8000 Test runs were to follow

` YOU ARE a long time retired,' is a phrase I seem to have heard many, many times over the last few weeks, always from well-meaning friendly souls.

Of course, they are absolutely right, and I, like everyone else who has ever been fortunate enough to enjoy a career in cricket or sport in general, know that it will be impossible to replicate the sort of lifestyle that has been my norm for the last 19 years. It is not that I am going to be away from the game much, in my new incarnation as sports-writer and commentator, nor will I miss out on the travel that has been very much part of the enjoyment and education which cricket has brought.

But quite simply, the emotional highs and lows that come with scoring hundreds, Test or otherwise, followed by the inevitable ducks, whether brought about by bowlers' brilliance or one's own ineptitude, do not come from any other source. At least by retiring one can perhaps remove some of those huge emotional swings!

The question is, why bring the end forward like this? There was a year left on my contract with Hampshire, and the season just past as been as productive as any during my four years on the south coast, so that it would not have been unreasonable to have assumed that I could have taken next season as one in which to give that final concerted effort as a staged farewell, or even as a springboard to yet another season!

I let that and many other thoughts drift in and out of my mind over the weeks that followed the end of the season, knowing full well that the feelings which said `I'm glad that season's over' would fade nicely in time, but the simple question I had to ask myself was whether or not I wanted to give the necessary commitment to the game that another season would require.

That word `commitment' has been very much ringing in my ears ever since the last-but-one England captain made it a key issue in Australia on the tour of 1990–91. Although it was being abominably misused in that particular situation, it is certainly relevant to this one, as every county captain, cricket manager and chief executive is mustard-keen nowadays to make as sure as possible that they have a squad that is going to be on the ball for all the right reasons all through each and every summer. You can't exactly fault them for that.

Keen observers might have spotted the absence of the name Gower from one or two Sunday scorecards, in the latter half of the 1993 season, something which would not have been planned by the Hampshire cricket committee last April.

In fact, when the possibility of this retirement became more realistic at the end of the season, Mark Nicholas was heard to murmur the odd sentence along the lines of `We can do something about Sundays in your contract for next year,' as an unofficial bargaining-point.

But he and I are both aware that for me to perform as I ought, and to get the best out of myself, the challenge needs to remain in the game, alongside the will to accept that challenge. Sundays are actually a bit of an irrelevance to this argument – although indeed I might well have accepted any such offer to consider Sunday a day of rest with alacrity – because it is an overall attitude that is the key.

Without the will to accept the challenge, without the right drive, no-one gets the results they hope for, and furthermore the signs were quite obvious to me by the end of September that one of my major incentives to drive myself on had also been removed.

I have seldom made any bones about the fact that Test cricket has been the main item of my career, the greatest source of pride and disappointment over the last 15 years, and that the chance to play it has kept me at the crease over all these years. Having played in a few Tests over the years, I know how important they are to me, and this in no way belittles the cause of county cricket, nor the quality of much that takes place at that level.

Thus, to see the writing on the wall, as evinced by the direction that England's selectors have taken both with their late-season and winter-tour choices, was enough to make me think that now would be a good time to quit, with head held high, happy memories, and plenty to do elsewhere.

I pay little heed to comments such as Keith Fletcher's, made after my announcement, supposedly suggesting that I was still in their thoughts. There had only been six or seven weeks of speculation in which to pick up the phone and quietly broach the same topic if the thought were that important.

However, the choice is mine to do what I will. It is not up to others to make that sort of decision, although events and trends will always influence one's decision-making process. I leave the game happy to have achieved everything that goes alongside my name in the record-books, and proud of those achievements.

But the greatest benefit of those years spent playing the game comes in the pure pleasure of the friends made and kept, both at home and abroad, respected colleagues and opponents alike. It is the spirit of the game that counts, as upheld by the people that play, administer and watch it. I hope that I will continue to see that spirit upheld for a long time to come, from whichever part of a cricket ground I will be watching.

   David Gower is the new cricket correspondent to the Sunday Express.

© Wisden CricInfo Ltd