Top 10 retirements from international cricket in 2017

4. Shahid Afridi

For close to two decades, Shahid Afridi was a key player for Pakistan

Below are the steps we performed before including Shahid Afridi's name on this list:

-Checked and cross-checked his age

-Noted the date on which he announced his retirement

-Calculated the number of days between that date and today

-Pray that he doesn't retract his retirement

While some of our readers might think we are being paranoid, we are well within our rights to do so as we are talking of a cricketer who has retired five times and has retracted it four times. Jokes apart, Afridi's retirement left a void in international cricket, both in terms of quality of play and entertainment value.

Earlier in his career, the former Pakistan captain earned plaudits for his swashbuckling batting. However, as his career progressed, he became more of a bowler who could tonk the ball around. Yet he excelled in both departments as he scored more than 10,000 international runs and picked up close to 550 wickets.