Pakistan’s left-arm speedster Shaheen Afridi, their all-format skipper and batting star Babar Azam and England’s Test captain and modern-day great Joe Root have received the biggest titles among the ICC annual awards for the year 2021.
While Shaheen has been named the ICC men’s cricketer of the year 2021, Babar and Root have been adjudged ICC men’s ODI cricketer of the year and ICC men’s Test cricketer of the year, respectively.
Afridi was awarded the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for his excellent run last year, as he now joins an esteemed list of players to have received the prestigious trophy and award in the years before.
“I feel truly honoured and privileged to become the first Pakistan cricketer to win the prestigious Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for the ICC Men’s Cricketer of the Year,”
“I had always dreamt of doing something unique and special for Pakistan. In this background, I am elated and thank Almighty for blessing me with this respect,”
Shaheen said, as quoted by ESPNcricinfo, from a video message part of the announcement on the ICC site.
Shaheen, still only 21, was absolutely brilliant as the all-format leader of Pakistan’s bowling attack last year. He took 47 Test wickets from just nine games while averaging an eye-catchingly low 17.06, including three five-fers. He also bagged eight wickets from six ODIs that he played in 2021, besides 23 scalps in T20Is from 21 matches with an economy rate of 7.86.
In T20Is, Shaheen’s most memorable performance came during the T20 World Cup in the UAE, where he dismissed Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul and Virat Kohli in the all-crucial Super 12 fixture against arch-rivals India, helping Pakistan beat their neighbours for the first time in a World Cup and push his team to the semi-finals from there.
Babar getting the ICC men’s ODI cricketer of the year award shouldn’t surprise people. He has been a giant run-getter in the format for a long, long time now. In 2021, Babar played only six ODIs but made a whopping 405 runs in those, averaging 67.50 with a strike-rate of 108.
What tilted the scales in Babar’s favour for the honour is his tremendous knock in the third one-dayer of the series against England in Edgbaston last summer. In a match where Pakistan were desperate for Super League points after going down in the series, their skipper led his troops from the front, making an outstanding 158.
Babar went on to call this innings the “best innings of my career”, citing that he was struggling a bit at the time and needed that knock to regain his confidence and mojo.
Root, the England Test captain, may have coped up criticism for his team’s Ashes drubbings in Australia and his own lack of big scores on tour. But let that not cloud our judgement of his year as an individual player at the Test level, for he had a prolific set of 12 months for his country.
The Yorkshireman made a jaw-dropping 1,708 runs from 15 Tests in 2021. He recorded as many as six hundreds, four half-centuries and averaged 61.
Root began the year in great fashion with a pair of marathon hundreds in Galle against Sri Lanka, following that up with another great century in Chennai. All three centuries helped England pull off rare Test victories in the subcontinent.
Root’s big scores dried for a brief time against India away and at home versus New Zealand. But he regained his prolific ways with the return series in the UK by the Indians, his favourite opposition, whom he hit for three centuries in the Pataudi Trophy.
