High time to go

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I have always admired Australian cricketers of the 2000s. Arrogant, aggressive, always on banter mode and brilliant at their game. They dominated the landscape of cricket last seen by the great West Indian side of the 70s by my father.
But the quality that I admired most in them was not related to cricket at all. Rather, it was a very peculiar soft skill, which was very different to the general mentality amongst Indians - to leave on a high, where they were could exit on their terms and not become semi retired and pose a headache for selection committees. Of course, the cricketers didn't have much to do after calling it a time as they had finished their careers.
Indian cricketers of that time were remarkably great too, especially the batsmen. They were fabulous at the game but their exits were lingering, following the path of professionals whose skills (fitness and fielding in particular) had been outdated. This left a bad taste in the mouth and rather soiled their legacies to some extent. We can still hear some of them cribbing about their "forced departures" and how insulted they felt at the treatment of the Board.
These different decisions might have something for us to learn about in professional career choices. Aussies felt that that is was imperative to call it quits at the peak. They believed that what will follow will be a decadance - a slow low will mostly on account of the dreaded comfort zone - where things become routine, the learning stops, the passion drops and you wait reactively for something challenging to come up. Most Indian cricketers felt that it was their right to continue playing even when their glory days were behind. This lead to a different kind of arrogance and not until MSD decided that it was time for a newer generation to take the fold, they left.
Careers also follow a similar pattern, a normal distribution; leaving at the median will allow one to have sufficient highs and lows. Adding a proactive jump at the median can help with a very steep learning curve and maintaining the highs which are required for self motivation.

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