As the decade has come to an end and ICC has announced the teams of the decade for different formats, there are a few players who might think they were hard done by and perhaps, they also deserved a place in those teams. While the fans and the pundits are mostly satisfied with the ODI and the test teams, there have been a lot of debates on the T20I XI.
The fans and the pundits are of the view that there are at least 5 other players who could have got a look in as far as the T20I XI is concerned, but the jury which picked the XI went the other way. Here are the 5 players who could have been selected in ICC T20I XI of the decade –
#1 Martin Guptill
Martin Guptill was the third-highest run-scorer in T20I cricket in the period between 2010 and 2020, just behind Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma. Guptill played 82 T20 international games in that period and scored 2382 runs at an average of 32.63 and at a strike rate of 136.19. The Kiwi opener hit 114 sixes and 214 fours as well, so his boundary percentage, which is one of the major factors in T20I cricket, was pretty high too.
With Rohit Sharma being picked as one of the openers and Virat Kohli being picked as the no. 3 batsman, Guptill could have been picked as the second opener based on his numbers.
#2 Babar Azam
If the logic behind not picking Guptill was the fact that he is not someone who can adapt to different conditions around the world and is a player perhaps most suited to flat tracks, then Babar could have been the other opener to partner Rohit.
Babar, who made his T20I debut in 2016, has scored 1681 runs in 44 T20I games he has played and is averaging 50.93. He and Kohli are the only two players to be averaging more than 50 out of all the batsmen who scored more than 1000 runs in T20I cricket in the last decade.
#3 Eoin Morgan
Eoin Morgan has the best figures among all the middle order batsmen who played T20I cricket in the last decade. Batting in the middle order is perhaps the toughest job in T20I cricket as the middle order batsmen don’t often get enough deliveries to get themselves set before they have to get going.
But, despite batting at no. 4 for most parts of his T20I career, Morgan scored as many as 13 T20I half-centuries in the last decade. He was the only middle-order player to score 2000 runs in the given time period, and he scored them at a decent strike rate of 137 as well. Morgan’s exclusion from the T20I team of the decade is indeed baffling.
#4 Jos Buttler
Jos Buttler scored more than 1500 runs in T20 International cricket in the last decade and his average and strike rate, both were decent. While he averaged 30 with the bat, he struck the ball at the rate of 140 runs per 100 balls and scored 10 half-centuries as well, to go with it.
The most impressive thing about Buttler’s batting in T20I cricket is his frequency of hitting boundaries. The English wicket-keeper batsman hit 135 boundaries and 64 sixes in 1105 balls he faced in T20Is in the last decade.
#5 Imran Tahir
Imran Tahir’s numbers in the shortest format of the game at the international level are absolutely brilliant. Not only has he been able to maintain a very low economy rate right through his T20I career, but he has also been a frequent wicket-taker as well.
In 38 T20I games that Tahir played in the period between 2010 and 2020, he grabbed 63 wickets at an average of 15 and an economy rate of 6.73. Rashid Khan, who has been named the T20I cricketer of the decade, has an average of 12 and an economy rate of 6.14 between 2010 and 2020. There is no reason why both Rashid and Tahir couldn’t have been selected together in the T20I team of the decade.
