The Cricketer's countdown through the best players of the decade reaches the mid-way point with the world's finest wicketkeeper, England's World Cup hero and three game-changing spinners
Chris Gayle is the only player in history to claim each of an international T20 century, an ODI double and a Test match triple. Despite featuring in just 18 Tests since the start of 2010, Gayle extended his career best to 333 against Sri Lanka in 2010, and his 147-ball 215 against Zimbabwe at the Manuka Oval in 2015 made him only the second player after Australia's Belinda Clark to register a double-century in World Cup cricket. However, at least at the international level, his decade is merely punctuated by these highs, with an average of 35.60 from just 160 matches, despite turning out for the West Indies continuously through the decade.
Instead, one has been more likely to find him plying his trade on the T20 circuit, with the last 10 years seeing him register 12,333 runs across 371 appearances in the format. No other man has yet eclipsed 10,000 in their career, and his tally of 21 centuries dwarfs the second-placed David Warner and Michael Klinger on eight apiece, though perhaps that is to be expected when one's career incorporates appearances for 18 different teams in 12 different tournaments. Now 40, Gayle is no longer quite as prolific as he once was – his T20 average following the "Don't blush, baby" controversy of 2015-16 is only 31.02 – but he remains an attractive prospect for franchises around the globe.
Michael Clarke holds the unfortunate honour of having lost five Ashes series outright to England, however the batsman closed his career in the decade with five of the most productive years of his life. Between 2010 and his retirement in 2015, Clarke registered 20 of his 36 career hundreds (including 16 in Test whites), however perhaps no innings will have been more critical than his top score of 74 to secure a seven-wicket victory over New Zealand in the 2015 World Cup final and close his 245-match career in the format.
Clarke enjoyed a run at the top of the ICC's Test batting rankings during a phenomenal 2012, which opened with a career-high 329 not out against India in Sydney before going on to muster further scores of 259 not out, 230 and 210 by the year's end. All four innings came on home soil, where he averaged 65.64 in Tests during the decade, and captaining Australia to a series whitewash when England visited in 2013-14 will have provided sweet retribution for the tourists' victory in the winter of 2010-11.
However, no innings will have proved more poignant in Clarke's career than one at the Adelaide Oval against India in 2014. In what turned out to be the final 50-plus score of his Test career, Clarke battled back from retiring hurt with a back injury to raise three figures not even two weeks after the death of his close friend and teammate Phillip Hughes.
Former White Ferns captain Suzie Bates has collected 6,377 runs and 95 international wickets this decade
After representing New Zealand at netball in the last decade, Suzie Bates turned her hand to cricket full-time in the 2010s and quickly justified her decision. As an ODI opener for the White Ferns, she averages 53.48 with the bat and boasts 29 scores of 50 or more in 70 innings, with only Australia captain Meg Lanning boasting more than her eight centuries in the format in the past 10 years. After moving up the order in 2012, Bates has remained ever-present in the top 10 of the ICC's ODI batting rankings, all the while captaining her side on 140 occasions.
A Test debut has thus far eluded her – New Zealand's women last lined up in whites in Scarborough in 2004, two years before Bates' international debut – but she has nevertheless cemented a reputation as one of the best players in the history of the women's game. Her 66-ball innings of 124 not out against South Africa in Taunton in 2018 was at the time the second-highest score in the history of the T20 international format, and Bates has also proved an adept short-form all-rounder with her 34 KSL wickets the joint-most accrued by any overseas player in the four-year run of the tournament.
Ben Stokes ends the decade as one of the most celebrated figures in British sport, having last week been named the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year. The calibre of cricket's most recent winners says it all – Andrew Flintoff in 2005, Ian Botham in 1981 – and the result is a testament to the impact Stokes personally had on perhaps the most thrilling summer of cricket in recent memory. He was named player of the match in July's World Cup final after top-scoring with an invaluable unbeaten 84, and his subsequent innings of 135 not out to level the Ashes at Headingley six weeks later has been hailed by many as the greatest that Test cricket has ever seen.
Of course, two innings does not a whole decade make, but only four men have collected more than his 177 caps for the country since his 2011 debut. The Test format is the only one where his averages bear the true hallmark of all-round brilliance – in 59 matches, he has eight centuries at 35.94 and 137 wickets at 33.45 – though he only made his red-ball debut in the fateful Ashes tour of 2013-14. It was then in 2016 where he began to establish himself as a game-changing batsman, scoring 258 from just 198 balls against South Africa in Cape Town in his first innings of the year.
Stokes had missed the 2015 World Cup after averaging less than 16 with the bat in his 24 ODIs ahead of the tournament, but he has gone on to prove integral to Eoin Morgan's side since with 50 wickets and a batting average of precisely 50.00 across the four-year cycle. This year's successes will have sweetened the memories of the 2014 and 2016 World Twenty20 tournaments – he was ruled out of the former after breaking his hand punching a locker, and latterly he was hit for four successive sixes by Carlos Brathwaite after being entrusted with the last over of the final – and they have capped a remarkable turnaround following extensive legal trouble after a trip to a Bristol nightclub in 2017.
Rashid Khan, a 21-year-old leg-spinner from Nangarhar in Afghanistan, is a cricketer like no other. After breaking through to his country’s under-19 and full national sides in the 2015-16 season, his list of teams is in itself a whistlestop tour around the contemporary short-form circuit – Adelaide Strikers, Band-e-Amir Dragons, Comilla Victorians, Durban Heat, Guyana Amazon Warriors, Kabul Zwanan, Sunrisers Hyderabad and Sussex Sharks – and yet for every single side he has conceded fewer than seven runs an over, adding to his collection of 272 wickets every 16.36 balls in T20 matches.
Such has been Rashid’s rise that he was briefly appointed Afghanistan’s captain across formats earlier this year, with a memorable highlight coming in Chattogram in September as he led the side for only their third Test match. Rashid opened the match with a run-a-ball first-innings half-century before claiming 11-104 inside 42 overs, powering the team to a 224-run win over a longstanding Full Member side in their own back garden. The match saw Rashid claim just his 50th first-class wicket – he has played just eight official red-ball games, compared to 71 ODIs and 194 total T20 outings – but comfortably demonstrated that the youngster’s prodigal success owes far more to talent and ingenuity than limited-overs cynics might care to admit.
With a cleverly-disguised googly, Rashid Khan boasts sub-20 bowling averages in both ODI and international T20 cricket
Sri Lanka first handed a cap to Rangana Herath in September 1999, but it took Muttiah Muralitharan's retirement in 2010 before he was afforded an extended run in the side, and he seized the opportunity with aplomb. In 36 Test outings on home soil during the decade, Herath picked up no fewer than 234 wickets, and among spinners only Ravichandran Ashwin and Yasir Shah are set to close the 2010s with a more impressive strike rate.
Barring some sort of Boxing Day miracle, Herath's first-innings 9-127 against Pakistan in Colombo in 2014 (which became 14-184 by the end of the five days) will also take the crown for the best international figures of the decade. The left-arm spinner also proved prolific in the T20 format, claiming career-best figures of 3.3-2-3-5 against hosts Bangladesh in the 2014 World Twenty20 before Sri Lanka went on to lift their first global trophy in 18 years.
It does not feel like an exaggeration to say that Misbah-ul-Haq is Pakistan cricket. Little more than two years after playing his final international match two weeks shy of his 43rd birthday, in which he shared a retirement with fellow top-order stalwart Younus Khan, last month's tour of Australia saw him elevated to the roles of both head coach and chief selector, and at the time of writing his side is pushing towards a famous victory over Sri Lanka in their second home Test of the decade.
From the start of 2010 until his retirement, Misbah provided a rare consistency to the Pakistan side by captaining in 149 of his 179 appearances. Though he made just eight centuries in his 57 Tests in the decade, he did so at an average north of 50, which rose to 65.66 during de facto home games in the United Arab Emirates. Every series in which he registered at least 150 runs resulted in either a draw or a Pakistan victory, and a 356-run second Test victory over Australia in Abu Dhabi in 2014 was particularly notable for identical scores of 101 – though the second innings effort came from just 57 deliveries, tying Viv Richards' record for the fastest in Test history.
As the women's game has moved further into the spotlight across the past 10 years, Sarah Taylor's name has become synonymous with lightning glovework. At the peak of her powers, rarely could an England series go by without Taylor conjuring up an impossible stumping to become a viral sensation – her 157 international outings in the decade included 77 of them – and her remarkable leaping effort to catch a reverse-sweep from Australia's Jodie Fields at Hove in 2013 ranks as perhaps the most impressive moment of wicketkeeping of the decade.
It is no wonder that peers like Adam Gilchrist consider her to be the greatest wicketkeeper on the planet, and her brisk displays with the bat have seen her tally 2,531 ODI runs at the second-highest strike rate of any English woman. Only incumbent captain Heather Knight has scored more, though she has had 20 additional opportunities to do so, and her career-best innings of 147 against eventual semi-finalists South Africa was one of the highlights of England's 2017 World Cup campaign.
That tournament proved particularly significant as it marked Taylor's return to the side after an extended break on mental health grounds, and her contribution of 396 runs in the competition galvanised the side to a famous Lord's success over India in the final. Ultimately Taylor's battles with anxiety have overcome one of the game's greatest talents – aged just 30, she announced her retirement from England duty in September after three years in and out of the international setup.
England captain Joe Root has scored more than 14,000 international runs since debuting in 2012
Since entering the Test arena as a cherubic 21-year-old, Joe Root has clearly identified himself as one of the brightest talents the English game has seen in generations. His defiant 226 against New Zealand in Hamilton was his 17th century in the format. However, Root finds himself lower down in our list than his 'Big Four' peers as he is yet to demonstrate run-scoring as prolific while shouldering the burden of captaincy.
Since he was elevated to the leadership role in 2017 after the resignation of Alastair Cook, Root's average in Tests is more than 10 runs worse off, and his return of 774 runs at 36.85 this year is on course to be his smallest since 2014, where he averaged 97.12 across seven outings. He does, however, end the decade as one of just 15 Englishmen with a World Cup winners' medal – a further 16 centuries have been tallied in the 50-over format as England have risen to become the world's leading side, and his average of 54.04 through 26 outings at ICC tournaments demonstrates his big game capabilities.
The emergence of off-spinner Nathan Lyon in 2011 answered a question Australian cricket had been asking since the retirement of Shane Warne four years prior. It is no wonder that he has been christened 'The G.O.A.T.' by teammates, as his Test wicket count in the eight years that have followed recently eclipsed Dennis Lillee to trail only Warne and Glenn McGrath on the all-time leaderboard. Ahead of the Boxing Day Test against New Zealand later this month, Lyon's collection now stands at 376 scalps, including hauls of 20 or more in two series against each of India and England, and a career-best 8-50 came in Bengaluru in 2017 as Australia skittled their hosts for 189 on the opening day.
Lyon had opened the decade as a member of the Adelaide Oval groundstaff before later finding considerable success under the leadership of state teammate Steve Smith. In 34 such outings, Lyon claimed 150 wickets, and his form away from home sees him just one wicket shy of 200 as he enters the 2020s. The spinner has also found himself as a fringe member of the national white-ball setup, including making his first of four World Cup appearances against England at Lord's in June, though his T20 international career extends to just single games in 2016 and 2018.
The Cricketer's 50 Best Cricketers of the Decade continues tomorrow...
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