A crucial shift in Indian cricket
Rohit and Bumrah being named in Wisden’s top five cricketers of the year is momentous
The Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack named its Five Cricketers of the Year this week. Apart from England fast bowler Ollie Robinson, New Zealand opener Devon Conway, and South African women’s cricketer Dane van Niekerk, the list included Indian captain Rohit Sharma and pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah. This was the first time in the history of the annual list — it goes back to 1889 — that two Indian players featured in the same year. And Bumrah is only the third Indian fast bowler, after Kapil Dev in 1983 (also for batting and captaincy in a historic World Cup year) and Zaheer Khan in 2008, to make the cut.
While the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack list may not be as significant today as it was till the turn of 21st century when England was the epicentre of the global game, a study of the annual lists provides a nostalgic and instructive overview of players who led the march of the global game. The first Indian to make the list, for example, was the country’s first Test captain CK Nayudu in 1933. He was followed by Vijay Merchant (1937), Vinoo Mankad (1947), MAK Pataudi (1968), BS Chandrasekhar (1972), Sunil Gavaskar (1980), Dev in 1983, Mohinder Amarnath (1984), Dilip Vengsarkar (1987), Mohammad Azharuddin (1991), Anil Kumble (1996), Sachin Tendulkar (1997), Rahul Dravid (2000), VVS Laxman (2002), Zaheer in 2008, Shikhar Dhawan (2014), and Virat Kohli (2019). The list has an England tilt, insomuch as it factors in the impact on the English home season the previous year, and a player can feature in it only once. But looking at the Indians who were picked over the decades suggests that the list lays out a fairly accurate and objective overview of the march of the Indian team (with notable exceptions Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, MS Dhoni, R Ashwin, and perhaps some of Chandra’s contemporaries in the 1970s spin quartet).
But what makes this year’s list important enough to be picked out for commentary? Other than the fact that it features two Indians, mirroring cricket’s global power shift, it chronicles a crucial generational shift in Indian cricket – in terms of leadership with Kohli making the way across formats to the ascendant Sharma, and in terms of its metamorphosis into a fast-bowling unit since the arrival of Bumrah in 2018 provided the cutting edge to a burgeoning pace pool. Team India now has a different characteristic than any of its previous iterations, and the five cricketers of the year list by the 2022 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack manages to capture that transformation.