The Cricketer's countdown of 50 players that have defined the decade continues, from Australia's most fearsome speed demon to two of the subcontinent's most influential captains
Mithali Raj is one of a rare breed of active international cricketers to have debuted in the previous millennium, having scored an unbeaten 114 on debut against Ireland in the World Cup of 1999. Nevertheless, she continues to captain the Indian ODI side, leading them out on over 100 occasions since the turn of the decade and averaging 58.52 with the bat while doing so.
While she has now retired from the T20 format – she was dropped from the side during the 2018 World Twenty20 despite successive fifties, with an innings including 20-plus dot balls not going down well with coaches – there is no sign yet of her career slowing down, as she has spoken of plans to take the team to the 2021 World Cup.
If the 37-year-old remains captain when the tournament gets under way in New Zealand, an inevitable motivator would be to lift her first ICC trophy. She is the only Indian to lead a side into two World Cup finals, and in 2017 she finished the tournament just one run shy of England's Tammy Beaumont on 409 as she took India to a second silver medal.
Mitchell Johnson's international career did not begin with much reason for fanfare – in December 2005, he bowled nine wicketless overs against New Zealand under the ICC's short-lived ODI Super Sub regulation while Simon Katich went to put his feet up – but Johnson at his best was one of the most captivating talents of his generation. His Ashes campaign in 2013-14 needs no introduction, with 37 wickets in five Tests at an average of 13.97 and three player of the match awards spearheading an Australian whitewash after three lost series on the bounce.
Johnson had finished the previous decade dominant in a similar fashion, earning the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy as the ICC's player of the year in 2009. However, before his Ashes efforts made him just the second player after Ricky Ponting to win that crown for a second time, his Test record had taken a dip, with 13 wickets costing 56.61 apiece in six outings in 2011. He was one of four players dropped from the Australian setup early in 2013 for the 'Homeworkgate' incident on their tour of India, and other trips around Asia and England were far from his most lucrative.
Also a formidable white-ball bowler, Johnson claimed 128 ODI wickets in 79 appearances during the decade, finishing his career in the format in style with team-leading figures of 3-30 against New Zealand to seal the 2015 World Cup at the MCG. He also displayed signed of becoming a handy all-rounder, with seven half-centuries in his 70 Test innings in the decade, and averages above 20 against key opponents England, India, South Africa and Sri Lanka.
This decade in Sri Lankan cricket has surely been defined by the retirements of stalwart batsmen Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara, and a glance at Angelo Mathews' career is telling: since the start of 2010, he has played under no fewer than 13 different captains. However, the all-rounder – 10 years the junior of Jayawardene and Sangakkara – has been a rare constant through it all.
Only Virat Kohli has played more than Mathews' 333 international matches since 2010, and near identical batting averages in the Test (44.58) and ODI (44.56) arenas simply highlight his workmanlike consistency. Mathews is the only player certain to close the decade with the combination of 10,000 runs and 100 wickets for their country – the banned Shakib al Hasan is the next closest, and even he is 2,790 worse off – and a remarkable 2014 haul of 1,160 runs in 11 Tests saw him named captain of the ICC's Test team of the year.
Proteas captain Dane van Niekerk is one of the most prolific all-rounders in the history of the women's game
It would be unreasonable to ask for more from an all-rounder than Dane van Niekerk. The South African has forged a reputation as strong for bold top-order hitting as for incisive leg-spin, entrusted to open the batting in her country's one and only Test of the decade and yet also claiming an astounding analysis of 3.2-3-0-4 to seal a substantial victory over the West Indies in the 2017 World Cup.
Though circumstances have never quite seen her top the ICC rankings, the numbers say it all: as captain at ODI level since 2016, her average with the bat is over twice that with the ball (47.57 versus 23.08). Statistically, van Niekerk is also the side's most successful captain – this is the first decade South Africa's women has achieved a winning record in the ODI game, and she has led the side to victory in 22 out of 42 attempts.
Her importance to South Africa's hopes of victory is, however, quite astounding. In a typical white-ball win, she will make over 48 with the bat and take wickets at less than 12 each, making her a vital recruit for both KSL and WBBL outfits in recent years. Even in those leagues, she has often been united with national teammate Marizanne Kapp, and the pair made a unique kind of history in the 2018 World Twenty20 by becoming the first married couple to bat together in an ICC event.
Despite being the first to arrive on the international scene, Ravindra Jadeja has often found his career overshadowed by the achievements of fellow India spinner Ravichandran Ashwin. For instance, Jadeja has played 48 Tests to Ashwin's 70, and only 15 of those have even been played away from home. Yet, the moustachioed maverick is the holder of an impressive record himself, being an invaluable member of Virat Kohli's side on their march to becoming the world's premier Test outfit. Jadeja has now accumulated 156 wickets at 23.82 each under 34 matches of Kohli's reign, and his all-round credentials have been constantly on show with a batting average sitting at a dash under 50 across the last three years.
Jadeja has also been a regular member of the country's white-ball efforts, with 38 wickets in ICC tournaments and a typically under-the-radar starring role in this year's World Cup campaign. Typically deployed by Ravi Shastri as a gun substitute fielder for much of the tournament, Jadeja finally broke into the playing XI in time for the two-day semi-final against New Zealand at Edgbaston before coming agonisingly close to single-handedly securing a spot at Lord's. Coming to the crease at 92 for 6 after 30.3 overs, he top-scored with 77 in a blistering 59-ball knock that followed a wicket, a run-out and two catches.
Though MS Dhoni ends the decade apparently out of the India side and subject to swirling retirement speculation, the 38-year-old wicketkeeper is guaranteed to be revered as one of his country's all-time greats. Scoring an unbeaten 91 in the second innings to be named player of the match in a home World Cup final is likely to do so alone, never mind the way he struck the six winning runs in Mumbai, but Dhoni's record also boasts 323 other matches since the turn of the decade, with 9,601 runs and precisely 500 dismissals.
For some time, Dhoni was unrivalled in the ODI game, with his 196 matches in the format second only to captaincy successor Virat Kohli. As demonstrated by that 2011 final, he was the unflappable master of the chase, with 20 scores of 50-plus in 81 attempts and an average of 78.25 in such situations in winning games as leader. All 50 Tests he played between 2010 and 2014 came at the helm, collecting the ICC Test Championship mace in both 2010 and 2011, and his Chennai Super Kings outfit has missed just one IPL final out of its eight campaigns, including Dhoni lifting the title in 2010, 2011 and 2018.
MS Dhoni was on top of the world after a match-winning 91 to seal India's first World Cup win since 1983
The aftermath of a terror attack in Lahore in 2009 may have meant that Pakistan batsman Younis Khan played out the final decade of his international career without his country playing a single game on home soil, but any difficulty arising from that did not show itself in his Test record. His 18 centuries in just 55 matches included doubles in four disparate climes (Chattogram, Harare, Abu Dhabi and The Oval), and he is one of just five men in the decade to claim centuries in at least 30 per cent of Test match outings.
After flirting with captaincy between 2005 and 2009, Khan had been banned by the PCB for alleged misdeeds early in 2010, missing the controversial tour of England that summer as a consequence. His return to the side against South Africa in Dubai in November then brought a player of the match crown for an unbeaten fourth-innings 131, and he went on to average 54.37 throughout the second phase of his Test career. A particular highlight came against Australia in 2014, where Khan finished the two-Test series with 468 runs, including three successive centuries and a combined winning margin of 577 runs.
When England lifted the World Cup trophy in July, a portion of credit was quickly bestowed upon captain Eoin Morgan's close friend and personal inspiration Brendon McCullum. It was a crushing defeat to McCullum's unflinchingly daring yet unwaveringly endearing Blackcaps in the 2015 tournament that set England's four years of transformation into motion, and shared dressing rooms in both the IPL (Kolkata Knight Riders) and T20 Blast (Middlesex) allowed Morgan to absorb McCullum's methods and forge the vision that became a world champion side.
In many ways, there are few more admirable cricketers in this generation than McCullum. Having started primarily as a boisterous wicketkeeper-batsman, his aggressive strokeplay had single-handedly brought spectacle to the IPL on its 2008 launch in Bangalore, yet the McCullum of this decade wholly exhibited equal parts steadfast maturity (his gruelling Test-best 302 against India in 2014) alongside the rollercoaster thrills. Before his international retirement in 2016, McCullum narrowly crossed 8,000 runs and – in signing off on his international career by striking the fastest hundred in Test history – registering a Morgan-matching 14 centuries on international duty for the decade.
Morne Morkel formed one half of the decade's most feared fast-bowling tandem, combining for 886 wickets with Dale Steyn since the start of 2010. Ably backed up in the Test arena by Vernon Philander, and most latterly joined by the searing pace of Kagiso Rabada, the arsenal provided South Africa with the firepower to rise to the top of the world rankings in all three formats of the game during 2012.
Morkel himself played until the start of 2018 before assisting Surrey to the County Championship title on a Kolpak deal – his 59 wickets in the campaign came at just 14.32 apiece, an average bettered only by Warwickshire's Olly Stone among players with more than 20 scalps. The red ball produced 248 of his Proteas wickets in the decade, including seven five-fors in 67 outings, and South Africa lost just four of the 27 Test series in which he played a part.
While Steyn was often the partner finding the limelight, with six nominations to the ICC's Test team of the year to Morkel's unfathomable zero, his junior partner was narrowly more prolific with in the limited-overs game, with 154 wickets at ODi level headlined by a team-leading 17 during the 2015 World Cup campaign. His strike rate in the format of 29.5 pips the likes of Trent Boult and Lasith Malinga, and the 74 Englishmen who fell victim to him in 27 outings will be pleased to see a home side without him come Boxing Day in Centurion.
Ross Taylor has accumulated more than 13,000 international runs since the start of 2010
New Zealand have relied on performances from Ross Taylor for far longer than the past decade, and his consistency is illustrated by the fact that his six highest innings in it – including three Test double-hundreds, and a remarkable 181 not out battling through injury against England in a Dunedin ODI chase last March – have each been scored against different opponents.
Just twice has Taylor finished the calendar year short of 1,000 international runs – 2011 and 2016 saw him miss out by just 59 and 75 respectively – and, at the age of 35 with a game still to play at Melbourne next week, he is already certain to conclude his most productive year to date: with 1,820 runs in 41 innings to date, scored at an average of 50.55, he is 286 clear of Kane Williamson and has more than double the tally of third-placed Tom Latham.
The recent Test series win against England saw Taylor become just the fourth player (after Virat Kohli, Angelo Mathews and MS Dhoni) to make a 300th international appearance in the decade, and over half those caps have come in the Blackcaps' ODI side. Taylor, who captained the team on 20 occasions between 2010 and 2012, has averaged above 70 in games his team has won in the format, and he was a key performer for the team that made it to successive World Cup finals in 2015 and 2019.
The Cricketer's 50 Best Cricketers of the Decade continues tomorrow...
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