Babar Azam, Pakistan’s all-format captain, has been nominated for the prestigious ICC Cricketer of the Year award, which honours the best cricketers in the world. Besides Babar, it is worth noting that the Zimbabwean all-rounder Sikandar Raza is included alongside the Test captain of the England team, Ben Stokes, and the Test captain of New Zealand, Tim Southee.
In 2022, Babar had a stellar year across all three formats and finished as the highest run-scorer across all three formats. The only cricketer in the world to score more than 2,000 runs in international cricket was Babar Azam who scored 2,598 runs at an average of 54.12 in 52 innings of international cricket in the calendar year of 1996.
Also, in the course of the calendar year, the stylish batter scored eight international centuries, the most ever in a calendar year. There was also an English player on the list, Jonny Bairstow, who has six centuries to his name. The 2022 season saw Babar score four centuries in Tests, three centuries in ODIs, and one century in T20Is.
Babar is nominated along with Ben Stokes, who won the T20 World Cup for England at the end of last year and had an incredible year as captain of England’s Test team. Babar also played an integral role in England’s T20 World Cup win in Australia. In 28 international matches played in the year in which Stokes played, he scored a total of 1,066 runs and picked up 33 wickets. It was Stokes’ captaincy that allowed England to change their fortunes and lead them to a historic whitewash against Pakistan in their three-match series in Pakistan during this period.
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As one of the stars of the show for New Zealand, Tim Southee was the fastest bowler in the world. It was in 2022 that Southee picked up 65 wickets at an average of 28.67 in 39 innings in international cricket. In the ongoing first Test match between Pakistan and New Zealand being played at Karachi, Southee is thought to be on the verge of leading New Zealand to victory.
There are four nominees in total for the award, with Zimbabwe’s Sikandar Raza being the fourth. Moreover, Race is also included in the list of nominees for both the ODI and T20I player of the year awards. Raza was outstanding with both the bat and the ball throughout the whole year. The number of runs he scored in 39 matches he played in the calendar year was 1,380, and the number of wickets he took was 33. Throughout the 2022 T20 World Cup, he played a major part in helping Zimbabwe qualify for the Super 12s, where they defeated Pakistan by a single run in the finals.
