- Tuesday, April 16, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
Three Indian players have made it to the Men’s T20 Team of the Year 2022 announced by the International Cricket Council (ICC) on Monday (23) and they are Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, and Hardik Pandya.
Both Kohli and Yadav have been in top form in the white-ball format last year while Pandya gave the team a perfect balance with some brilliant all-round performance.
While India failed to deliver as a team in the year’s two marquee T20 tournaments — Asia Cup and World Cup — the likes of Kohli, Yadav, and Pandya produced some top individual performances in those competitions.
England wicket-keeper Jos Buttler, who led his country to the T20 world crown in Australia in November last year, was picked as the captain and one of the openers of the team, while Pakistan wicket-keeper Mohammed Rizwan was chosen as his opening partner.
Other players who completed the XI are Glenn Philips (New Zealand), Sikandar Raza (Zimbabwe), Sam Curran (England), Wanindu Hasaranga (Sri Lanka), Haris Rauf (Pakistan), and Joshua Little (Ireland).
Kohli had a fabulous touch with the bat in 2022. He finished as the second-highest scorer in the Asia Cup held in the UAE with a tally of 276 runs in five games. He also slammed a hundred in the T20 format which came against Afghanistan, ending his three-year-long wait for an international ton.
Yadav also had a sensational 2022. He became the second batter to hit more than 1,000 runs in a calendar year in the format. He finished the year as the highest run-getter, scoring 1,164 runs including two hundreds and nine fifties with a strike rate of 187 plus. He was particularly in great touch in the T20 World Cup, scoring 239 runs at a strike rate of almost 190.
Pandya, who has emerged to be a front-runner to lead India in the white-ball format for a long period, also had a good year as he excelled both with the bat and ball. It was his best year by numbers while playing for India as he scored more than 600 runs and picked 20 wickets.
