Indian and international cricketer Robin Uthappa has announced his retirement. Uthappa has been granted a no-objection Certificate (NOC) by Kerala, the final state he played for in domestic cricket, and is now free to accept contracts in international T20 contests and “chart a new phase in my life.”

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Who is Robin Uthappa?

Former Indian cricketer Robin Venu Uthappa, born on November 11, 1985, last played for Chennai Super Kings in the IPL and Kerala in domestic competition. In ODI and T20I matches, Robin has competed for team India.

In April 2006, during the seventh and last game of the English tour of India, Uthappa made his One Day International debut. He made a productive debut, scoring 86 runs as the opener before being run out. For an Indian player making their limited-overs debut, it was the highest score ever.

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He is known as The Walking Assassin because of his strategy of charging the bowler from below. He was crucial to India’s victory at the 2007 ICC World Twenty20. He finished the 2014–15 IPL season and the 2014–15 Ranji Trophy season as the player with the most runs scored in both competitions.

He was born in Kodagu in Karnataka, India, and attended Sri Bhagawan Mahaveer Jain College, a campus of Bangalore’s Jain University.

Ethnically, Robin Uthappa is half Kodava. Roselyn, his mother, is Malay. His father, umpire Venu Uthappa, is a former hockey official. He later converted to Christianity and continues to follow the faith now. In March 2016, he married his longtime girlfriend Sheethal Goutham.

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Having played in 46 One-Day Internationals (ODIs) and 13 Twenty20 Internationals (T20Is), Uthappa, a member of India’s Under-19 World Cup team from 2004, made his international debut in 2006. He was also a part of the team that won the first T20 World Cup in South Africa in 2007.

He also won several domestic titles with Karnataka, as well as the IPL twice, first in 2021 with the Chennai Super Kings and once in 2014 with the Kolkata Knight Riders.

Uthappa, presently 36 years old, started his domestic career in 2002-03 with Karnataka and played his final game with Kerala in the shorter 2020-21 season. He also participated in the 2017–18 and 2018–19 seasons for Saurashtra.

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He averaged nearly 41 in 142 first-class games while scoring 9446 runs with 22 centuries and another 6534 runs with 16 hundreds in 203 one-day games. In 291 T20 games, the last of which he played for Super Kings in the 2022 IPL, he scored 7272 runs and averaged 133.08.

During the 15 seasons of the IPL, he played for the Super Kings, Knight Riders, Mumbai Indians, Pune Warriors India, Royal Challengers Bangalore, and Rajasthan Royals. He scored 4952 runs in 205 IPL games while batting at a 130.35 strike rate and a 27.51 average.

Due to his bad performance, Uthappa was sacked shortly after the 2007 T20 World Cup. He became well-known all around the world in 2006 thanks to his aggressive batting approach. In the 2013–14 season, the year before he played his final few games for India, he helped Karnataka win the Ranji Trophy, the Irani Cup, and the Vijay Hazare Trophy, completing a rare trifecta.

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The next year, he played well enough for Knight Riders in the IPL, ending the season as the competition’s leading run-scorer with 660 runs at a strike rate of 138.

He was allowed to join the Indian team again for the tours of Bangladesh and Zimbabwe in 2014 and 2015, but the meagre earnings compelled him to leave once more. As Karnataka became the first home team to repeat its championship triple in 2014–15, he dominated the Ranji Trophy run chart in the interval.