3 Players who could win the 2019 ICC Cricketer of the Year award 

No cricket fan will be able to forget Ben Stokes' heroics at Headingley
No cricket fan will be able to forget Ben Stokes' heroics at Headingley

While most of the cricketing talks in 2019 surrounded the ODI World Cup which took place during the English summer, some of the cricket played in the other formats of the game was outstanding as well.

The World Test Championship kicked off straight after the World Cup and some of the top Test teams in the world went head-to-head with points at stake in every match, which sure produced some thrilling encounters.

While the World Cup heroes will surely make a strong case for themselves to be named the ICC Cricketer of the Year, 2019's best Test performers will also be in there with a shot.

Here are 3 players who could win the ICC Cricketer of the Year award:

#1 Pat Cummins

Pat Cummins
Pat Cummins

Pat Cummins took a total of 99 international wickets in 2019. There was hardly any series that he missed for Australia and was mostly the pick of their bowlers.

He topped the list among the Australian bowlers in all three formats of the game with his wickets tally of 59 in Test cricket, 31 in ODIs, and 9 in T20Is.

Cummins took the most number of wickets in Test match cricket in 2019 and averaged just 20.13 runs per wicket in the twelve Test matches that he played in. His dominance in Test cricket can be gauged from the fact that Nathan Lyon, who stood second in the list of the leading wicket-takers in Tests in 2019, finished 14 wickets behind him.

The Australian co-vice-captain also excelled in the ODI World Cup, grabbing 14 scalps in ten games at an economy rate of below 5. For his relentless consistency and for his penetration with both red and white ball, Cummins will be hard to beat for the ICC Cricketer of the Year award.

#2 Ben Stokes

Ben Stokes
Ben Stokes

Ben Stokes scored more than 1500 international runs and took more than 30 wickets (in Tests and ODIs combined) for England in 2019.

But with Stokes, it's not just about his tally of runs and wickets. Some of the performances that he put in this year could be put in the category of the best cricketing performances of all time.

His composure in the World Cup final and his grit while batting with no. 11 Jack Leach in the Headingley Test match will remain in the memory of every cricket fan forever. The fact that Stokes pulled off desirable results for his team on both those occasions made his efforts even more special.

He scored 821 runs in Test matches and 719 runs in ODIs in 2019, while taking 22 and 12 wickets in the two formats respectively. With credentials like these, he surely is amongst the frontrunners for the year-end award.

#3 Rohit Sharma

Rohit Sharma
Rohit Sharma

This was the year Rohit Sharma established himself in the Indian Test team for the first time in his career. He had played Test cricket before but was highly inconsistent and as a result, he was always in and out of the squad.

However, when he got the opportunity to open in Test cricket against South Africa at home, he grabbed it with both hands. In the five Test matches that Rohit played in 2019, he scored 556 runs at an average of 92.66 with three hundreds, out of which one was a double hundred.

Coupling it with his performances in ODI cricket, where he scored 1490 runs in 28 games averaging 57.30, and T20Is, where he scored 396 runs in 14 games averaging 28.28, one can say that it was a near-perfect year for him on the individual front.

The right-hander also created the world record of scoring the most number of hundreds in a single World Cup as he went past the three-figure mark five times in ODI World Cup 2019.

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Edited by Anurag Sharma