The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Tuesday revealed the Men’s Test Team of the Year 2022.
The 11-man team is dominated by Australia as four out of the eleven players belong to the Pat Cummins-led side including the captain himself.
Apart from four Australians, the list also features three players from England, and once each from India, Pakistan, South Africa, and the West Indies.
Kraigg Brathwaite is the only West Indian cricketer to make it to the team. England’s Test skipper Ben Stokes has been named the captain of the side with Pant as wicketkeeper.
The West Indies captain Kraigg Brathwaite is the only West Indies cricketer to feature in the ICC Men’s Test Team of the Year 2022. Pant had a phenomenal year with the bat in 2022 as he was the series top-scorer as his team beat England early in 2022, and was comfortably his team’s standout batter for the year.
Brathwaite hit a half-century in each of the first two Tests against England as well as a marathon 160 in the first innings of the second Test, in an individual performance that will have given his opponents sleepless nights.
The right-hander scored 94 and 51 in the first innings of each of the Test wins over Bangladesh in June, and then showed his class with 174 runs in the match at Perth against Australia in November, including a superb rearguard 110.
In total he hit 687 runs in 14 innings in the year, averaging 62.45
ICC Test Team of the Year: Usman Khawaja, Kraigg Brathwaite, Marnus Labuschagne, Babar Azam, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes (C), Rishabh Pant (WK), Pat Cummins, Kagiso Rabada, Nathan Lyon, James Anderson