He was the best of a generation, a sure thing to reach 100 Tests, until he wasn’t. Now former batting prodigy Will Pucovski has officially retired from cricket, admitting he is still suffering “scary” symptoms from repeated concussions.
The Victorian last played Sheffield Shield in March 2024, when he was hit on the helmet by a delivery from Tasmania speedster Riley Meredith. It was the 13th known concussion of his sporting career. Pucovski’s official announcement comes after a medical panel recommended he retire.
The 27-year-old said his life had changed and it hadn’t been easy. “I’m not going to be playing cricket again,” Pucovski told SEN. “It’s been a really difficult year, to put it as simply as possible. The simple message is, I won’t be playing at any level again.
“In the couple of months post that [last concussion] I struggled to get anything done, walking around the house was a struggle. My fiancee was annoyed because I didn’t contribute to chores. I was sleeping a lot.
“From there it’s been a tough year, a lot of the symptoms didn’t go away, which has led me to this decision. The first few months were horrendous, but things didn’t leave me.”
Fortunately for Pucovski, a promising future awaits. He has looked a natural when invited to be part of Channel Seven’s coverage in recent years, has expressed excitement at opportunities in coaching and sports administration, and is marrying his fiancee Em on Friday. The pair have been together since 2020.
“She’s been through it all, she sees all the difficult times which a lot of people don’t, even my best mates, they don’t see a lot of the really tough parts of it,” he said.
“Knowing I’m marrying her at the end of all this has been a pretty grounding thing, where you just sort of go, ‘OK, well, yeah, there’s a lot of stuff going on, but there’s also more important things in the world’.”
Even without the threat of facing fast bowlers from 22 yards, Pucovski knows his future will not be without challenge. He is still managing concussion symptoms and related threats to his mental health, among an assortment of health problems.
“There’s a lot of fatigue, which is quite bad, I still get regular headaches, I struggle with a weird thing that has been absolutely bizarre to me, I really struggle with things on my left side,” he said.
He admitted that the pain is not restricted to his head. “It’s pretty tough at the moment, I really struggled watching any of the cricket over the summer knowing I wasn’t involved, especially the Test series and even tracking the [Sheffield] Shield stuff was pretty hard because I was just desperate to be part of it and it’s hard being on the sidelines.”
But he sees a future for him in cricket or sport more broadly. “I think long term, it’s probably been my first great love in a way. You’re always going to come back and always have that desire to help,” he said.
“If I can’t play at the level that I want to play at, then hopefully helping other people get there, or potentially in the long run working in the sports administration side. I’ve always been pretty passionate about business and sports business and that kind of thing, and also the high performance side and getting the best out of people. The beauty is there’s always different avenues to get that fix.”
Pucovski played his only Test in January 2021 against India at the SCG, scoring 62 in the first innings. He finishes with a first-class average of 45.19 that includes seven centuries and a highest score of 255 not out.
He said his baggy green meant “so many different things” but, more than anything else, pride. “It’s probably just going to be one of those things where I’ll always smile whenever I think about it, just because it was such a special moment. Unfortunately, I only got to wear it once, instead of 100 times, but once is still… when you grow up and you’re five and you’re 10 and you’re watching that kind of stuff, you probably just think, if I just get to wear it once, it would be the best.”
