KEY POINTS:
Some of our more cynically-minded cricket followers - and I include myself in this category - might be having just a little difficulty digesting the reasons and explanations behind Nathan Astle's shock retirement decision.
The man who last year said he was ready to throw the game away if the selectors continued to play silly-buggers with his career could hardly have picked a stranger time or place to step down from cricket.
Nor could he have given a more puzzling explanation.
Here we are, halfway through what's supposed to be a high-powered tri-series in Australia, perched on one of the most isolated outreaches on the planet - a game against the world champions just a day away - and Astle would like us to accept that he's merely had a change of heart.
Perhaps if he had been in the middle of a purple patch with the bat or at the end of a series, it would be easier to swallow the assertion that he's woken up one morning and suddenly decided to walk.
But the facts are he's been struggling with the bat, threatened by the selectors and shuffled around the order by the coach, to the extent that his World Cup place was starting to look anything but secure.
On top of that, New Zealand's opening batting combination has reached a crisis point this season.
Add to the mix the resurgent form of former New Zealand opener Lou Vincent, who has been recalled on the back of some solid innings in the domestic State Shield competition, and it's clear the pressure was starting to build on Astle and the selectors.
So, what about the idea that coach John Bracewell and the management team have approached Astle, offering to assist him through a dignified retirement rather than announcing that he's been axed?
It's certainly worth considering, not only because Astle seems to have lost the hand-eye co-ordination that made him such a threat in previous years, but also because of the remarks he made about retirement last month.
At the time, Astle was being interviewed in the lead-up to the first test against Sri Lanka and his comments then contrasted wildly with the slightly rehearsed reasoning he came out with yesterday.
"I'm really enjoying it at the moment," Astle said last month. "I have to get to the World Cup first and then, maybe [I'll play] one more year or more - who knows?
"All I can say right now is that I'm enjoying my cricket and that I'm pretty much taking it as it comes.
"I think you know when it's time to walk away and I've got to say that I don't feel like that at the moment - and I don't think I will in the near future. In fact, I don't think about retirement at all now."
Which makes you wonder about his comments yesterday, when he justified his decision with the rider that he'd been "fighting this day" for the past eight months, and was close to making himself unavailable for the tri-series.
Astle also mentioned that he'd made the decision over the past week and was the "only" one who realised, when he walked out to bat against England at Adelaide last Tuesday, that he was about to play his final international innings.
If that was the case, then why on earth would he continue on to Perth to announce his retirement? Why would he insist on carrying on to a distant city - the best part of an eight-and-a-half-hour flight from his home-town of Christchurch - to announce that he didn't want to play?
It simply doesn't add up.
