Having broken into the England Test side the player’s decision to walk away from the game aged 25 caused quite a stir but he explains that, for him, there is a lot more to life than cricket

Professional sport is scarred by stories of ageing athletes clinging to faded glory, or by bleak tales of their struggles in retirement, and so Zafar Ansari stands out in shimmering contrast. Ansari played three Tests late last year, his debut in Bangladesh and two in India, picking up five wickets and grinding out a highest score of 32. It was a start in the hardest arena of cricket and so Ansari’s retirement in April, at the age of 25, seemed unusual.

Of course those who knew him felt no shock. Alec Stewart, the director of cricket at Surrey, for whom Ansari had played since the age of eight, was supportive. “It’s a brave and considered decision,” Stewart said. “He was always open and honest.”

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Stewart alluded to Ansari’s academic background, for the left-arm spinner had obtained a double first in social and political science from Trinity Hall, Cambridge, as well as a subsequent MA in history. “When Zafar was reading a novel, the rest of our boys would be doing a colouring-in book,” Stewart said in his homespun way. Kevin Pietersen, who played with Ansari at Surrey, tweeted amusingly: “Way too clever to be a cricketer!”

Over the last six weeks I have got to know Ansari a little better. It is striking to receive some beautifully written emails from a sportsman, whether young or retired, about subjects stretching from I Am Not Your Negro, the recent James Baldwin documentary, to Ansari’s encouraged and flowing analysis of Labour’s unexpected election results. Books and writing have been at the heart of our exchanges, from Hisham Matar’s The Return to Norman Mailer’s The Fight.

It seems fitting that Ansari suggests we meet at the National Theatre, rather than The Oval, so he can talk for the first time in detail about his reasons for leaving cricket. After we have chatted for an hour he relives the quietly dramatic moment when he told his Surrey team-mates he was retiring a month into a new season: “There definitely were a few tears. I was choking up, and eventually crying. Other guys were also in tears. Alec Stewart choked up and Kumar Sangakkara said some lovely things. A physio I’ve known a long time was crying his eyes out. It was tough.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ansari appeals unsuccessfully during the County Championship Division One match between Surrey and Lancashire at The Oval in April. It was to be his last game as a professional cricketer. Photograph: Jordan Mansfield/Getty Images

Ansari smiles at his bittersweet memory. “It’s difficult when you don’t have a Twitter account, and are reserved in your public output, because these are very hard decisions you spend hours talking about with your family. But once you stop playing it’s natural there are lots of things you’ll miss. So it was reassuring it felt difficult.

“It would actually be inhuman to think that you’d just forget. You can’t move away from something you did for so long without an ache. But I’m fortunate this is my choice – rather than a decision forced on me by injury or age. It happened over a long period as my competitive instinct was diminishing – and there was a fundamental sense I needed to be not only obsessive about cricket but obsessive about constantly improving my game. I started to tire of the complete immersion demanded by cricket.”

Ansari’s involvement with England’s Test team underlined that consuming focus – while making him regret the way in which international sport isolated him from real life. “I don’t want to make it sound negative but being an England cricketer requires a single-mindedness about cricket I lack. At Surrey, having lots of disparate things in my life helped my cricket. But this approach was not appropriate with England. The standard of cricket and the intensity of being abroad for 12 weeks, with the press around you, meant I could not be myself. I was missing out on things that are authentic to me.”

He was proud to have become a Test cricketer and Ansari knew he should be thinking more about bowling to Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli than worrying about Donald Trump. But such a restricted worldview did not make sense. “It was a very politically significant time. Trump was elected on the first day of our opening Test in India. I was batting at 10 and we weren’t allowed our phones in the dressing room. I was getting snippets of information from security but I felt so disconnected from something I would have been hyper-connected to here. The combination of playing very difficult cricket, while missing things that mattered so much, made me think more clearly about my future.

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“I heard the news about Trump at the end of that day’s play. We got our phones and it was a shocking moment. I expected [Hillary] Clinton to edge it and found it difficult to accept. I’ve since focused most on the policy – like changes to healthcare provision, the attempted Muslim ban, as well as the ramping up of immigration and deportations – rather than just thinking of Trump as the clown he often appears. It’s important to be less hysterical about the person but more hysterical about the political implications.”

Could he talk about such concerns to his England team-mates?

“Yeah, and I think they enjoyed the fact we had conversations around the breakfast table that we wouldn’t normally have as cricketers. They are by no means apolitical but their focus is inward a lot of the time. So we had some interesting discussions and there was a range of opinions.

“I don’t know if there were any people who were pro-Trump. But some were definitely sympathetic to things he was saying. I took it as a positive that there was space for these conversations. But when you have a degree there’s this expectation you can provide answers to questions you have no idea about. I’m just not that well-read so sometimes it was quite funny.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Zafar Ansari bowls during his Test debut for England against Bangladesh at the Shere Bangla National Stadium in Dhaka in October 2016. Photograph: Philip Brown/Popperfoto/Getty Images

Just as people expect Ansari to be the proverbial boffin, it was assumed by some that he would leave cricket for a career in the City. “People were really supportive of my decision to retire. Mike Atherton wrote a really nice piece – as did Ali Martin in the Guardian. But there can be the assumption that because you’ve been to Cambridge you’d only give up cricket to earn a lot of money. My girlfriend and friends found that quite funny – because they know how far it is from the truth. Cricketers don’t get paid like footballers but I was earning more than my parents – and they have been academics for 40 years. So if money was a motivation I would have stayed longer in cricket.”

Ansari smiles when he outlines his plans for the next year.

“I’m going to work for a charity, starting in September, which supports young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. It’s called Just For Kids Law and they’re in north London. They work with young people involved in the criminal justice system. These are kids from disadvantaged backgrounds with educational difficulties, exclusions and immigration cases. I’m doing a year there as a trainee youth advocate while taking an evening law conversion course. It’s a great opportunity to develop new skills and, hopefully, help a few people.”

Compassion for others, and curiosity about their lives, beats just as strongly inside Ansari as his intelligence. “There are many people in cricket who are cleverer than me,” he suggests. “I think what perhaps differentiated me from other players wasn’t necessarily my ‘intelligence’ but rather my wider interests. I love going to the cinema, I love listening to podcasts and hearing people talking about politics and broader social issues.”

Did he sometimes feel unhappy as a cricketer? “It sometimes felt claustrophobic with a sense of me wanting to be doing other things. It was a restlessness rather than an unhappiness. I was tussling with it for two years and I worried about letting people down who had invested a lot in me. Alec Stewart had always been very good to me so I was concerned that, because of his own passionate commitment to cricket, he would struggle with me walking away at 25 – and saying that there is more to my life than wanting to be an international cricketer. But it was absolutely the opposite. Alec and everyone at Surrey understood – which really helped.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ansari receives a Surrey youth cricket award from the former Surrey and England captain Adam Hollioake in 2003. Photograph: Adam Davy/Surrey County Cricket Club/Press Association Images

“Since retiring it’s become obvious that the temporality of cricket is so distinctive when you’re a player. You spend five days a week from 9am to 7pm at the ground watching cricket, surrounded by cricketers. But since I’ve stopped playing I’ve started to follow the game more at home. I’ve followed England the last few weeks – and I’m engaging with it most days. I look at the scores online and I might watch 20 minutes of highlights. So that’s 40 minutes a day where I’ve followed cricket for pleasure. I didn’t do that as a player.”

Have there been days when he regretted his decision? “No. I’ve been back to The Oval a few times, as I’m still involved with Surrey’s charitable arm, and I’ve been up to the dressing room during games. It’s felt very comfortable.”

Ansari can now savour his three Test appearances. “Absolutely. The crowds weren’t that large in India [in Rajkot and Visakhapatnam] or Bangladesh – but they were intense and exuberant. The atmosphere made it special and I am more and more proud of those five wickets and the 49 runs I scored. My first Test wicket in Bangladesh was quite magical and it meant a lot when I was handed my cap. Mark Ramprakash [England’s batting coach] and I had played a little cricket together and he spoke incredibly kindly about me. That sense of entering an exclusive group is something to be proud of.”

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Did his more expansive interests outside cricket help him cope with failure better – when he dropped a catch or bowled poorly? “I probably felt those failures as much as anyone. In the moment of failure, or even the day of the failure, it hurt. But I could rationalise the situation a little more easily. I could genuinely say to myself that there are things that are more important in my life.”

Ansari flummoxed many whenever he was asked to pick his dream slip cordon. In 2015 he listed Malcolm X, Rosa Luxemburg, Chimamanda Adichie and Angela Davis. He laughs. “We get asked to do them every year and it’s funny how people pick up on that particular selection. Malcolm X is definitely someone I’m fascinated by but the last one I did included Rihanna and James Baldwin. It’s just fun.”

There is a seriousness, however, to Ansari’s interest in race and politics. His Masters’ thesis explored the legacy of the Deacons for Defense – an obscure 1960s black civil rights group in Mississippi and Louisiana.

“They were more conservative than the Black Panthers. But they were based in the deep south and reflected their geography. The Black Panthers had a more coherent leftist ideology but the expressive politics of the Deacons for Defense were very powerful. Considering America today, with Black Lives Matter, I looked back and tried to assess all the Deacons of Defense had done.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I started to tire of the complete immersion demanded by cricket,’ says Ansari, who will start working for a charity and studying at a law conversion course in September. Photograph: Sarah Lee/for the Guardian

The world today is even more fractured and dangerous. With a white mother and having been born in Ascot and gone to Cambridge, Ansari stresses that: “I obviously had a privileged upbringing. But I think I look at the urgent questions we face today through my father’s eyes, to some extent, an Asian man and a Muslim. He arrived in the UK from Pakistan in the early 1960s, aged 14, and I always try to consider things from his perspective.

“Society is in a concerning place whatever your background. There are troubling questions about inequality and the atomisation of people – the way in which societies are splitting up socially and economically. There are 3.1 million Muslims in this country and it’s often very difficult to have conversations about divisions in British society after devastating attacks on all communities. But it’s important we keep having those conversations.”

Cricket is a wonderful diversion – and, as Ansari makes clear, it can also play a part in uniting communities. “It was a special moment this winter when we had four very different England players with a Muslim background in Moeen Ali, Adil Rashid, Haseeb Hameed and me on tour. They will continue to be great representatives for England.”

Ansari will make his own lasting contribution in very different fields. At 25 it’s impossible to know yet where his best work will unfold – but it is easy to believe that, beyond cricket, so many more people will benefit from his intelligence and concern for the world around him. Zafar Ansari’s real life, after all, has only just begun.