“After a great deal of consideration, I’ve decided that now is the right time to retire from cricket,” Vaughan said. “It has been an enormous privilege to have played for and captained my country and this is one of the hardest decisions I have had to make.

“Having played almost non-stop for 16 seasons, I feel that the time is right for the focus to shift to the next generation. We have some fantastic talent coming through the English counties and, with the next Ashes series upon us, now is the time for the younger players to rise to the challenge of building on the success achieved in English cricket in the last few years.”

An elegant right-handed batsman, he was ranked the best in the world following the 2002-03 Ashes series in Australia, in which he scored 633 runs, including three centuries.

He was appointed captain in 2003, and his captaincy — characterised by meticulous attention to detail — coaxed the best out of some big egos, with intuitive bowling changes and imaginative field placings. His down-to-earth manner and superb man-management forged a sense of camaraderie in England’s cricket team, which they have struggled to emulate. If it had not been for his dodgy knees, on which he had numerous operations, then Vaughan almost certainly would have led England to more triumphs.

But last week, Vaughan was left out of England’s 16-man training squad for the upcoming Ashes series after having struggled to find form for Yorkshire in the county championship. He had scored only 147 runs in seven first-class innings this season.

Vaughan admitted that he had not done enough to warrant inclusion in the Ashes squad.

“I have not played well enough,” Vaughan said. “I have not got the rhythm or form to be picked in the Ashes squad. It has to be the best 16 players and I am not one of those.”

England could have given Vaughan one last chance to stake a claim for inclusion by playing him in the England Lions match against the Australians in Worcester, but even he wasn’t in favour of that.

“To put me in Lions team would have been purely on what I have done in the past and you have to move forward,” Vaughan said.