The Mumbai Indians skipper Rohit Sharma, struggling for runs in the current IPL, will be cheered by the news that he and Jasprit Bumrah have been named among the “Five Cricketers of the Year” by Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack 2022.
Joe Root “is Wisden’s Leading Cricketer in the World”, a little ironically perhaps, seeing he has just stepped down as England skipper.
The five cricketers of the year are chosen by Wisden’s editor, Lawrence Booth, who explained they “represent a tradition that dates back to 1889, making this the oldest individual award in cricket. Excellence in, or influence on, the previous English summer are the major criteria for inclusion as a Cricketer of the Year. No one can be chosen more than once”.
Given its ups and downs, cricket is clearly the great leveller.
Booth, who also writes for the Daily Mail, said: “Indian opener Rohit Sharma was at the heart of his side’s 2-1 lead over England, and played starring roles with the bat
at Lord’s, where he made an elegant 83 in treacherous conditions, and at The Oval, where his superb 127 helped India overcome a first-innings deficit of 99. His series tally of 368 runs …was higher than any of his teammates.”
He added: “Jasprit Bumrah was central to India’s two Test wins last summer, taking three for 33 on the final afternoon at Lord’s, then thrillingly bowling Ollie Pope and Jonny Bairstow in successive overs to hasten his team to victory at The Oval. Had rain not washed out the last day of the first Test at Trent Bridge, his nine wickets there might have led to an Indian win, too. In all, he managed 18 wickets at 20 apiece in the four Tests, and scored some unexpected — and crucial — tailend runs.”
Booth told The Telegraph: “India almost had the Test year of their dreams, following a stirring series victory in Australia, and wins at Lord’s and The Oval to take a 2-1 lead over England in a series that will be finished in July. They also beat England and New Zealand at home. What prevented them from attaining perfection was defeat in the final of the World Test Championship by New Zealand, and a 2-1 defeat in South Africa after they had taken an early lead at Centurion. Another disappointment was their performance at the T20 World Cup in the UAE. But overall it was a memorable year.”
Former England Test captain Joe Root on the cover of the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack 2022 Sourced by The Telegraph
The other three who have made the cut include Devon Conway of New Zealand, Ollie Robinson of England, and Dane van Niekerk, who plays for the South African women’s team.
Root has been criticised for his captaincy but Booth paid tribute to his remarkable batting: “Root rose above the struggles of England’s Test side to produce one of the all-time great performances in a calendar year. His 1,708 runs have been beaten only by
Mohammad Yousuf in 2006 and Viv Richards in 1976, and included six hundreds. And he scored his runs in his fifth year as England captain, at which point many of his predecessors had already called it a day.”
Pakistan’s Mohammad Rizwan was named “the Leading Twenty20 Cricketer in the World”. This was for “scoring a world record 2,036 runs in all 20-over matches at an average of 56. Of those, 1,326 – another record – came in international matches, including 67 off 52 balls in the World
Cup semi-final, an innings played after he spent two nights in hospital with a severe chest infection.”
Wisden’s editor described the year gone by as “annus horribilis”, referring to England’s lack of success in Tests as well as the revelations about the racism encountered by the Pakistani origin spinner Azeem Rafiq at Yorkshire.
Booth wondered: “Can there ever have been a bigger gap between what English cricket hoped to be, and what it was – between reality and fantasy? Early in 2022, a long-planned assault on the Ashes ended with all-out surrender… Before that, a racism scandal brought to light by the courage of Azeem Rafiq made the game look unwelcoming, and worse. There was little to cherish.”
In the 1,536 pages of Wisden 2022 there are some eccentric and whimsical pieces. For example, “this year’s Cricket Round the World section includes a piece on cricket in Ukraine…. The piece focuses on … Hardeep Singh’s work building Ukraine’s first proper cricket ground in Kharkiv.”
It is not known whether President Putin has spared the pitch. Probably not.
The cricketing bible has always been a stickler for statistics. But this time it has revised those of WG Grace, Jack Hobbs and others.
“Wisden has adopted the statistics used by the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians, affecting the career figures of several prominent players,” it said. “The ACS have argued that ten matches which Wisden previously counted towards W.G. Grace’s first-class record were not, in fact, first-class — reducing his tally of runs from 54,896 to 54,211, and his haul of wickets from 2,876 to 2,809. Jack Hobbs, meanwhile, gains two hundreds, moving from 197 to 199, because the ACS ruled that some games played in 1930-31 were first class. Herbert Sutcliffe and Wilfred Rhodes are also affected.”
The 159th edition of Wisden is on sale in hardback for £57.
