Cricket

Sybrand Engelbrecht retires from international cricket

Published

6 months ago

June 17, 2024

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Sybrand Engelbrecht retires from international cricket

Sybrand Engelbrecht has announced his retirement from international cricket. The 35-year-old South-Africa-born batter made his Netherlands debut in 2023, and played 12 ODIs and 12 T20Is.

Netherlands’ defeat to Sri Lanka on Sunday night, which knocked them out of the T20 World Cup 2024, was Engelbrecht’s last international appearance. He marked the occasion with a spectacular boundary save that went viral on social media, racking up over a million views on Instagram reels.

That effort was characteristic of a player known for his brilliance on the field – he first came to prominence in 2008 when he took a flying, two-handed screamer at backward point while playing for South Africa against Papua New Guinea in the Under-19 World Cup.

Engelbrecht retired from all cricket in 2016 to focus on his career in financial and project management, and he began playing cricket recreationally in the Netherlands after moving there in 2021. By 2023, he was in the Netherlands national squad, having been picked for the 2023 ODI World Cup in India.

He has retired now at 35, having played exactly half his international cricket – eight of his 12 ODIs and four of his 12 T20Is – in World Cups. He finishes with 385 ODI runs at an average of 35.00, with two half-centuries, and 280 T20I runs at 31.11 and a strike rate of 132.70. He was Netherlands’ highest run-getter at this T20 World Cup, with 98 runs at 24.50 including 40 and 33 in close defeats to Full Members South Africa and Bangladesh.