Cummins named Cricketer of the Year for 2023

DUBAI: Pat Cummins won the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for the ICC Men’s Cricketer of the Year for leading Australia to the World Test Championship and the ODI World Cup titles, apart from helping the team to retain the Ashes. Cummins showed his worth throughout the year with bat and ball. He was the second-highest wicket-taker in Test cricket with 42 scalps, and capped off the year with his second ten-for in Tests.

An exceptional year in ODIs where he showed glimpses of being his old self saw Virat Kohli named as the men’s ODI cricketer of the year. He scored 1377 runs in ODIs in 2023, which included a tally of 765 in the World Cup alone. It was the most any batter had scored at a men’s World Cup, and he crossed fifty in nine of the 11 innings in the competition.

Suryakumar started the year scoring just 7 against Sri Lanka but followed it up with scores of 51 (36) and 112 not out (51) in the next two matches. The middle-order batter went from strength to strength in the format thereon. In all, he played 17 T20I innings in 2023, recording 733 runs at 48.86 which included five half-centuries and two hundreds. More importantly, amidst the carnage, he maintained a strike rate of 155.95.

Meanwhile, Usman Khawaja edged out Travis Head, R Ashwin and Joe Root to be crowned the Test cricketer of the year. He was the only one batter to score more than 1000 runs in the year.