Were it not for the mass exodus of Australia's veteran heroes, the mysterious and fascinating exit of Damien Martyn would have been a strong contender for story of the Ashes.
Martyn's was not your normal retirement, taking place as it did mid-series with Australia 2-0 up and on the verge of setting the record straight against England.
Amid the usual remarks about “the right time” and “nothing left to prove”, Martyn gave a convincing impression of a man who had had enough of it all. He said as much -the focus, the pressure, the stress had finally overwhelmed him.
His teammates and supposed best friends knew nothing of it. Martyn had been assured his spot was safe, but before the hysteria over Australia's astounding win in Adelaide had died down, he was gone.
He took off to a locale later revealed as the United States, probably the most cricket-ignorant nation in the English-speaking world. He really did slip away, virtually unnoticed.
In many ways, it was in keeping with a player whose reticence and emotional fragility had always sat awkwardly within a cricket team
which prided itself on audacity and resilience.
Now, Martyn has all but vanished from the face of the earth. He was spotted publicly for the first time since his retirement at the Hopman Cup tennis tournament in Perth just before New Year.
Martyn is said to have taken the counsel of Alan Jones, the former Wallabies coach and king of Sydney talkback radio. Jones, a hugely influential and controversial public figure, was with him in Perth and reportedly drafted the email which Martyn sent to Cricket Australia ending his 67-Test career.
For whatever reason, Martyn seems intent on staying out of the spotlight and maintaining his silence, which of course is his right.
Television footage at the tennis showed Martyn, who was with his wife Annika, being questioned by reporters. He refused to offer one word in response to even the most innocuous of questions, which again is his prerogative. But it strikes as peculiar behaviour.
Does Martyn have an axe to grind against the Australian media, or the Australian people? He plainly felt he had been roughly treated over the years by selectors, and press criticism was never water off a duck's back for this sensitive, defensive soul.
I suspect the final straw for Martyn was his apparently insignificant demotion from number four to five during Australia's run-chase in Adelaide.
Martyn was dropped from the Test team for over six years when, as a young man, he played a poor shot during Australia's failed chase of a small total against South Africa in 1994. He wore the emotional scars of this for years.
It wasn't until the 2001 Ashes tour of England that Martyn properly resumed his Test career as an older player. His sacking after the 2005 Ashes re-opened old wounds, but Adelaide offered Martyn the chance to lay some old ghosts to rest.
However, when Australia fell to 33-2 chasing 168 to win, it was Mike Hussey, not Martyn, who strolled to the centre. It was an incredible show of faith in Hussey, and a slight on Martyn. You are not our man Damien, the subtext read.
When he finally did come out to bat, Martyn played like a man with a point to prove, swinging indiscriminately and walking off with head bowed after a failed cameo contribution. He was said to be muted afterwards, despite Australia pulling off a win that Shane Warne described as the greatest with which he'd been associated.
Despite Martyn's often-fractious relationship with the media and the Australian cricket fraternity in general, he was a fine batsman and deserved to join Warne, McGrath and Langer in the back-slapping revelry taking place at the SCG this week. Nobody would have denied him that honour.
But, of course, he didn't want that. He wants to be the forgotten man. It's sad that his frustration with professional sport and his desire for solitude should have compelled him to end his career in a manner not befitting its splendour.
But that's Martyn: introverted, impassive and individual to the very end. An enigma during his career, he remains a mystery after it.