Dubai: After revealing the ODI and T20I teams of 2022, ICC also put out their list of the best Test team of the previous year with Rishabh Pant the only Indian to feature.
Pant enjoyed another stunning year with the bat, hitting 680 runs from 12 innings at an average of 61.81 and a strike rate of 90.90. He also scored two centuries and four fifties. He smashed 21 sixes in Tests in 2022 while producing six stumpings and taking 23 catches.
Pakistan captain Babar Azam, Australian batting duo of Usman Khawaja and Marnus Labuschagne as well as West Indies’ Kraigg Brathwaite also made it into the team along with England’s Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes.
In the bowling department, Australia’s Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon, South Africa’s Kagiso Rabada as well as England’s James Anderson sealed their places.
Khawaja’s hit a superb 137 in the first and an unbeaten 101* in the second against England and scored 496 runs, averaging 165.33 in the series win in Pakistan, hitting two centuries and two further scores in the nineties. He finished the year with 1080 runs to his name and an average of 67.50. His teammate, Labuschagne registered his first century of the year with a 104 against Sri Lanka in Galle in July. He finished the year with 957 runs at an average of 56.29.
Babar scored four centuries and a further seven half-centuries in 2022 and hit an extraordinary 1184 runs at an average of 69.94 in 9 matches, with his four centuries coming one each against the four Test opponents he faced. He hit 390 runs against Australia at home and amassed 348 more when England visited later in the year.
Across five innings, starting in the second innings of the second Test against New Zealand through until the end of the match against India at Edgbaston, Bairstow hit successive scores of 136, 162, 71*, 106 and 114*. Stokes, meanwhile, hit two centuries and 870 runs in 2022, at an average of 36.25 as well as taking 26 wickets.
Brathwaite scored 94 and 51 in the first innings of each of the Test wins over Bangladesh in June and then scored 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.
Cummins took 36 wickets at an average of just 21.83 in 10 matches. He also took eight wickets including a stunning five-wicket haul in the first innings against Pakistan in ;Lahore as well as a five-fer against South Africa in Brisbane in December. His teammate Lyon took 47 wickets in 11 Tests at an average of 29.06 and along with Rabada finished as the leading wicket takers of the year.
Speaking of Rabada, the South African quick snapped up 47 wickets from nine matches across 2022 at an average of 22.25 while England veteran Anderson took 36 wickets in 9 matches at an average of just 19.8 and an economy of 2.42.
