Our countdown of the decade's greatest talents continues, including two of England's all-time greats and the white ball's most potent pace threats
Whichever way you look at the numbers, there is no doubting Shakib al Hasan's place as the foremost all-rounder in the men's game. Across all formats, he has registered 8,861 runs and 418 wickets since the start of 2010 – no other Bangladesh bowler has even half as many wickets in the decade, and only veteran opener Tamim Iqbal is the only batsman more productive – and he has therefore found himself sitting on top of the ICC's all-rounder rankings in various formats for the overwhelming majority of the decade.
And yet, despite this career of immense consistency, it was not until he put his talents on display during this summer's World Cup that he appeared to get adequate recognition for them from the cricketing world. Situated at No.3, Shakib crossed 50 in seven of his eight innings, finishing the tournament with the highest average of any batsman (86.57) and behind only semi-finalists David Warner and Rohit Sharma in the runs chart. He also added 11 wickets with his left-arm spin, becoming the only player to register the double of 500 runs and 10 wickets in a single World Cup competition.
However, Shakib's remarkable decade will forever be marred by the two-year ban he is serving at the end of it, having accepted the punishment from the ICC in October after failing to report a series of approaches from a bookmaker. A suspended second year means he could potentially be in line to return part-way through next year's T20 World Cup, though Bangladesh are likely to struggle without their talisman until that point.
Aged 21, West Indies all-rounder Stafanie Taylor made history in 2012 by becoming the first (and so far only) player of any gender to simultaneously lead the ICC rankings for both batting and bowling. She achieved the double after putting in one of the all-time leading all-round performances in ODI cricket – an unbeaten 135 batting at No.3 against New Zealand at Sabina Park, before then rounding out the day with 4-35 in eight overs. In 47 home ODIs, Taylor has accumulated 1,774 runs at 47.94 and 63 wickets at 18.17.
Perhaps her finest work came during the World Twenty20 in 2016. The West Indies had been losing semi-finalists at each of the three previous editions of the tournament, but Taylor assumed the captaincy full-time ahead of the tournament and finished as its leading run-scorer (246 at 41.00) and just one wicket shy of the leading bowlers (8 at 15.25), marshalling a chase of 149 at Eden Gardens with a 57-ball 59 to take down three-time defending champions Australia, securing the West Indies' women the trophy just hours before their men repeated the feat against England.
Taylor has also replicated such performances on the growing women's domestic circuit, averaging north of 40 with the bat and being the leading overseas wicket-taker (34 at 19.29, level with Suzie Bates) across four KSL campaigns, while a knee injury that ended this year's WBBL campaign saw her fall just one wicket short of becoming only the third player (after Jess Jonassen and Sophie Devine) to register 1,000 runs and 50 wickets in their career in the tournament.
Unquestionably New Zealand's breakout star of the decade, Trent Boult has hurried to 458 international wickets in the eight years following his debut, placing him behind only Tim Southee, Sir Richard Hadlee and Daniel Vettori in the Blackcaps' all-time rankings. Like fellow left-arm quick Mitchell Starc, Boult has been a particular star for the side in World Cup tournaments – he finished level with Starc on 22 wickets in the 2015 tournament, held across Australia and New Zealand, and Kane Williamson entrusted him with the Super Over to close the 2019 edition – and with the white ball in general. In home ODIs, Boult has claimed all five of his career five-fors in the format – his 111 wickets have come at an average of 21.43, with 44 maidens in 53 outings – and he has twice been named by the ICC to their team of the year in the format.
Boult has proved a thorn in the sides of several batsmen in the course of his 64 Tests to date, taking 255 wickets with the swinging ball to sit seventh in the world across the last 10 years. His numbers in the format are remarkably similar to senior teammate Tim Southee – both have eight five-fors and one 10-wicket haul since the turn of the decade, and Boult leads by three wickets ahead of New Zealand's trip to Melbourne later this week – but he has achieved his success at a brisker rate, lower average and more miserly economy.
Lasith Malinga is the decade's leading ODI wicket-taker and the first man to pass 100 T20 international victims
Lasith Malinga has had the fewest Test outings of any man on our list since the start of the decade, retiring from the long game after 10 wickets and just two matches in 2010 with the aim of prolonging his career up to the 2015 World Cup. Evidently that strategy was rather effective, as the 36-year-old still appears to be going strong as the 2020s loom. While he may have lost an element of the slinging pace over the years, he more than makes up for it with precision and intelligence in the short-form game – 248 wickets in the ODI game sees him sit 71 clear of his closest competitor, and only Rashid Khan has managed to pip his 82 in the T20 international format.
The ultimate demonstrations of Malinga's skill and longevity have come this season, as he has silenced detractors by finishing the World Cup with more than twice as many wickets as his nearest teammate (13 at 28.69 to Isuru Udana's six at 49.33) before reversing a rumoured international retirement and claiming four New Zealand wickets in four balls while captaining the T20 side in Pallekele to repeat his otherwise unique feat from the 2007 World Cup. In the process, he became the third bowler (and first man, following Ellyse Perry and Anisa Mohammed) to register a 100th T20 international victim.
Malinga had earlier lifted his fourth title in five IPL campaigns with Mumbai Indians. Having been dropped after the 2017 tournament, he remained with the side for the 2018 edition as a bowling consultant before earning a fresh deal in 2019 as he pushed for a World Cup place. On the team, his 16 wickets trailed only the world-leading Jasprit Bumrah and brought his total IPL haul with the team to 152 in the decade, and Rohit Sharma's decision to throw him the ball for the final over of the tournament was justified, securing a one-run win with the last-ball wicket of Shardul Thakur.
Throughout his career, Stuart Broad has played a close second fiddle to James Anderson on the global stage. Ahead of Anderson's expected return to the England side in this week's Boxing Day Test in Centurion, he trails his partner in seam by just 10 wickets in the decade, and only India's Ravichandran Ashwin joins them in finishing it with 500 or more international wickets.
Broad, who stands six wickets away from making South Africa the fifth country he has claimed 50 Test wickets against since 2010, has played five more Tests than Anderson in that time. He also served as captain of the T20 outfit on 27 occasions following England's World Twenty20 triumph in the Caribbean at the start of the decade, in which figures of 2-21 saw him claim player of the match honours against Sri Lanka in the semi-final.
However, Broad has saved his finest efforts for Ashes contests, taking a team-leading 23 wickets in the absence of Anderson during this summer's series to ensure he finishes the decade with a phenomenal 100 wickets in 27 such matches. Only twice in that time has he gone wicketless, with a crowning achievement coming in a delectable spell of 9.3-5-15-8 at his home ground of Trent Bridge in 2015 that saw Australia rolled out for 60 and England place a firm grasp on the urn for the fourth time in his career.
Sachin Tendulkar may have opened the floodgates for double-centuries in ODI cricket against South Africa in Gwalior right at the start of the decade, but Rohit Sharma is the man who has since gone on to make the feat an astounding hallmark of his game, boasting no fewer three of them (including the all-time record of 264, scored from 173 deliveries at Eden Gardens in 2014) where only five other men and two women even have one. If one lowers the bar to a still-impressive 150, Wednesday's series-levelling effort in Visakhapatnam brings his count to eight, and he will now close the decade averaging a satisfying 46.64 from India duty.
After a middling record in his early years, Sharma emerged as a pivotal fixture in the side as Tendulkar's generation took their final bows, and all 38 of his international centuries (28 ODI, six Test, four T20) have been recorded since the turn of the decade. His consistency is demonstrated by his 50-plus ODI average in each of the last seven calendar years, and he has closed the decade by forcing his way back into India's world-leading red-ball setup by plundering three centuries (including, of course, a double) in four innings against South Africa in October.
Elsewhere, Sharma has proved an adept deputy for Virat Kohli in recent years, winning 22 of his 28 games in charge and starting off India's T20 innings at a brisk strike rate of 143.87. A member of India's squad as far back as the inaugural World Twenty20 in 2007, which remains his only global trophy to date, Sharma has enjoyed great success in the format, captaining Mumbai Indians to the IPL trophy in 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019 alike.
Ravichandran Ashwin was named player of the series on debut in 2011 after taking 22 West Indies wickets in three Tests
In international contests, no bowler has claimed more wickets since the start of 2010 than Ravichandran Ashwin. The off-spinner made his India debuts in white-ball matches in June 2010, however it was when he took on the Test game 17 months later that he first began to flourish: Ashwin was named player of the match for figures of 3-81 and 6-47 on debut against the West Indies in Delhi, before going on to claim another nine in the third and final Test in Mumbai to secure player of the series honours, and another seven five-fors in the next 24 months saw him take his 100th Test wicket in just his 18th game, becoming the fastest player to the milestone since Australia's Clarrie Grimmett in 1925.
Ashwin's Test collection now stands at 362 scalps (with a further 202 in the limited-overs game) and he is typically prolific across the sub-continent, with 50 matches in Asia yielding 297 of those and all seven of his 10-wicket match hauls. In October he tied Muttiah Muralitharan in passing 350 in just 66 matches, and – while the 33-year-old is yet to make a significant impact outside his favoured conditions – he has played a vital role in the home dominance that has seen India rise to the top of the red-ball game.
The fairytale scenes at The Oval as Alastair Cook struck his 23rd and final Test hundred of the decade masked the fact that England were still six years deep in the scramble to find someone to fill the boots of Andrew Strauss just 22 yards away. More so than any player before him, Cook was England's rock in the format – upon his retirement, over 10 years had gone by since they last fielded a Test XI without his name in one or other of the top two spots, and since first assuming the captaincy for a 2010 trip to Bangladesh he had registered 8,676 runs at 46.64.
Cook's defining moment came early in the decade, with his 2010-11 tally of 766 runs slotting in behind only Wally Hammond and two Don Bradmans in the history of five-Test Ashes contests. It was a form he could never quite replicate, at least against the old enemy – his three subsequent series as captain produced a total of 853 runs at 29.41, with a high score of 96 – though he did indeed lift the urn on home turf in both 2013 and 2015. He did, however, send records tumbling throughout the decade, becoming the youngest player in history to reach every milestone between 6,000 and 12,000 Test runs, and his final Test saw him leapfrog Kumar Sangakkara to claim the top spot among left-handers in the format.
Mitchell Starc is the epitome of a big-game performer. While starting his career under the captaincy of Michael Clarke, the left-armer collected 56 wickets in just 22 ODIs, averaging 13.19 and being named the standout player as Australia lifted the World Cup on home turf in 2015. Despite the team's struggles in the 2019 edition he became the first player since Lyn Fullston in 1982 and 1988 to top the wicket tables at successive tournaments, finishing six clear of second-placed Lockie Ferguson to bring his career tally to 49 World Cup wickets at a rate of one every 19.1 balls. That places him fifth on the all-time World Cup wicket table, and the four men above him have each played at least two more tournaments.
However, despite his fearsome displays with the white Kookaburra in hand, Starc has always looked to prove himself in the Test arena first and foremost. After the frustration of appearing just once in the recent Ashes tour, a lightning start to the home summer has seen him collect 23 wickets at 14.56 in the first three games to bring his red-ball stash up to 238 wickets in 55 matches, and at the WACA in 2015 he was clocked delivering the fastest recorded ball in Test history to Brendon McCullum at 99.7 miles per hour. Having now re-emerged in the country's T20 plans head of October's World Cup in the format, one would be a fool to bet against more milestones being shattered as the next decade commences.
Mitchell Starc has build formidable reputations with red and white balls alike, leading all Australians with 449 wickets since his debut
Having debuted for the Southern Stars as an 18-year-old, Meg Lanning has not gone a single year or played a single team without scoring an ODI century. As captain since the start of 2014 of one of the strongest national sides in the history of the women's game, she averages 57.39 in the format and has converted nine of her 19 half-centuries into three figures. Once her record of 126 runs in a T20 international had been finally equalled after five years by Sterre Kalis, a Dutch teenager playing against Germany, Lanning used her very next innings in the format to claim the record back, with 133 not out from 63 balls at Chelmsford also featuring 24 boundaries and comfortably securing her third successive outright Ashes victory as skipper.
Against the white ball, she was leading run-scorer as captain when Australia won their third successive World Twenty20 crown in 2014 before leading the side to a fourth four years later. Her record across two trips to the 50-over equivalent is 554 runs at 50.36, including a trophy in 2013. She is just 18 runs shy of becoming the sixth player to 1,000 WBBL runs, passing 50 in 20 of her 51 innings to date and averaging 47.19. The only achievement ostensibly missing from her collection is a Test hundred, though arguably it is only because injury kept her out of the pink-ball match at an astonishingly flat North Sydney Oval in 2016-17 and therefore she has only had the chance to make four outings in the format.
The Cricketer's 50 Best Cricketers of the Decade concludes tomorrow...
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