International Cricket Council (ICC) has revealed the nominees for Sir Garfield Sobers cricketer of the year award 2021 and it is quite surprising that there has been no Indian on the list at all. ICC has nominated two Pakistani cricketers, along with an England and a New Zealand cricketer.
It’s not that there haven’t been any consistent Indian players in the current calendar year. While the Indian captain Virat Kohli, a two-time winner of the cricketer of the year award, went through a bit of a lean patch, the Indian vice-captain Rohit Sharma raised his game a notch in all formats and was remarkably consistent.
Rohit scored runs in test series against England at home, in test series against England away, in the T20 World Cup and then in the T20Is against New Zealand as well, but ICC has gone with Mohammad Rizwan, Shaheen Afridi, Joe Root and Kane Williamson as the 4 nominees.
As far as Root is concerned, he played very few white-ball games for England this year. He scored most of his runs in test cricket only and he has already been nominated for the test cricketer of the year award, but ICC has nominated him for the cricketer of the year award as well, because of his tally of 1708 test runs in a calendar year is an extraordinary feat, even though it came only in one format.
Kane Williamson scored runs for New Zealand in a couple of ICC finals
Kane Williamson was in fine form with the bat in the New Zealand summer at the start of the year, but then he didn’t score a whole lot in the test series against England away. However, what went in Williamson’s favor is the fact that he scored runs in two very high profile matches, the World Test Championship (WTC) final which New Zealand won and the T20 World Cup final which New Zealand lost. The magnitude of those big performances earned Williamson a nomination, although he scored only 693 international runs in 2021.
Shaheen Afridi and Mohammad Rizwan are, however, two cricketers who were consistent for Pakistan in all formats of the game in 2021. Whether the Pakistan team played test cricket or T20Is, Shaheen was always there for them with the new ball, consistently getting breakthroughs upfront. Rizwan also hardly ever failed in any of the bilateral series or world events Pakistan participated in. While Shaheen finised 2021 with 78 wickets in 36 games, Rizwan scored 1915 international runs in 44 matches.
