Rishabh Pant Retired Out Vs BAN; What Is Retired Out Rule In Cricket?

Rishabh Pant Retired-Out vs Bangladesh In T20 World Cup Warm-Up (hotstar.com)

On Saturday, Rishabh Pant, in India’s warm-up game against Bangladesh left the crease after scoring a quick 53 (32). A similar instance took place in the Netherlands and Sri Lanka face-off on May 28 when Michael Levitt went back retired after scoring 55 (28).

The ‘retired out‘ is an occurrence in cricket in which a batter volunteers to be withdrawn from the field without intending to return to bat. 

Retired out is a varied situation from ‘retired hurt’ where the batter leaves the field due to an injury or any sort of discomfort that doesn’t allow him to continue. 

In a situation where a player is retired hurt, he/she can later return to bat whenever a wicket falls.

The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) who design the laws of how the game should be played clearly explains the aforementioned rule under Law 25.

Law 25.4 explains the retiring of a batter, in 25.4.1, it is stated – A batter may retire at any time during his/her innings when the ball is dead. The umpires, before allowing play to proceed, shall be informed of the reason for a batter retiring. 

The retired out is one of the rare occurrences in the sport that happens very rarely. Most of the retired out incidents take place during the warm-up/practice games that teams play before the start of a tournament or a long Test tour so that all the batters get match practices.

Like Rishabh Pant against Bangladesh, most batters who volunteer to go out of the field as retired out are the ones who have already spent enough time on the wicket to get into the match rhythm with a fifty or a hundred.