Michael Vaughan will announce his retirement at a press conference on Tuesday after his request to pick and choose his Yorkshire involvement this season was rebuffed, the Telegraph and Argus understands.

The former England captain saw the door slam shut on his international future when he was omitted from the provisional Ashes squad last week and, following a meeting with Martyn Moxon and Stewart Regan this morning, his Yorkshire career is now also understood to be over.

Vaughan expressed a desire to conclude his County Championship involvement with immediate effect but wanted to play in certain Pro 40 games at the back end of the current season, although the Yorkshire hierarchy appear to have opted for a clean break.

The decision represents a swift U-turn for Vaughan after his insistence to this paper during York-shire’s pre-season tour of Abu Dhabi that he would not retire if he failed to make the Ashes squad.

“There are so many players who don’t come back into county cricket after retiring from international cricket, but I feel refreshed and ready for a few more years,” he said on March 17. “I will be playing cricket next year, we will just have to wait and see where.”

“If I don’t play for England again, I will be playing for Yorkshire,” he added. “I love playing cricket, this is such a good life.”

Less than four months after making that statement, one of English cricket’s greatest success stories will now sit and watch the very Test series that made his name four years ago.

It is unfortunate for Vaughan that he didn’t get the chance to bat one last time at Headingley and his last act in professional cricket was now almost certainly being bowled off his pads for nine by AJ Harris in the dark at Leicestershire last Friday night.

He was not selected for Yorkshire’s Twenty20 defeat to Derbyshire but was at Headingley during the match, signing countless autographs and even refereeing a football match for his team-mates in their warm up.

“We said to Michael this morning that we felt it wasn’t appropriate for him to play,” said Yorkshire’s chief executive Stewart Regan today.

“That wasn’t the plan this morning,” he added. “But we discussed the situation and, with all of the hype and speculation, we thought it wasn’t in the team’s best interest.”

The official retirement of one of, if not England’s greatest ever captain, is expected to be announced at an Edgbaston press conference tomorrow morning before one of Yorkshire’s most famous number threes sacrifices the crease for the microphone and settles into what is sure to be a long media career.