Super Stokes? Imperious Perry? A look at the key contenders for Wisden's Five Cricketers of the Year

On the eve of the famed annual's 157th edition. Ashes heroes dominate our tips for the Almanack's prestigious honours board

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Ben Stokes

The England allrounder is, of course, the elephant in the room here. Stokes' heroics with the bat in the Ashes Test at Headingley instantly secured him a place in the game's folklore, and that just six weeks to the day since his player of the match performance in the World Cup final at Lord's. 

Come the year's end, Stokes had become both Stokes OBE and cricket's first winner of the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year prize since Andrew Flintoff in 2005, and it is hard to think of any single season performance that has had a greater impact on the English game than his.

However, there is one rather significant stumbling block. The Almanack's selections are traditionally based solely on performances during the English summer – check – and that each player can only claim the honour once. Stokes already earned the honours in 2016, part of an illustrious cohort including Steve Smith and Kane Williamson, who would surely both also be shoo-ins for their respective Ashes and World Cup exploits if not for their former glories.

Wisden dispensing with sacred tradition and re-honouring one or more of this trio would not be completely unprecedented, but it would be the first time since 1926, when Jack Hobbs was the sole recipient of the crown he first won in 1909 in commemoration of his surpassing WG Grace's tally of 126 first-class centuries. The only other exception has been Pelham Warner, The Cricketer's founder, upon his retirement in 1920 from 26 years of county cricket.

Ellyse Perry

One player about whom there can be little room for debate is 2019's other Ashes-conquering allrounder, who would become just the seventh woman (and first not from England) to claim the prize since its establishment in 1889.

Across the seven-match multi-format women's Ashes, Perry ran home as player of the match on four separate occasions. Obvious highlights would include scoring her second successive Test hundred and remaining unbeaten on 76 in the second dig when the umpires finally called time after four days in Taunton, and her previous outing in an ODI in Canterbury where her figures of 7-22 saw off England for just 75 and set a new record for Australia's all-conquering women.

In no small part thanks to Perry's best-in-show tallies of 378 runs at 94.50 and 15 wickets at 12.86, Australia's only loss came with the series already long secure – and even then, in the final game in Bristol, she was unbeaten on a T20I-best 60 as England claimed a consolation win.

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Pat Cummins celebrates the first of his 29 scalps during the Ashes campaign

Pat Cummins

It may have been the Bradman-esque run scoring of Steve Smith that spearheaded Australia’s first men’s Ashes retention in England since 2001, but with the ball likewise it was the tourists who boasted the standout performer of the series.

Cummins, unlike every other member of Australia's attack, had not played a Test match in England before 2019. Instead, his experience of the conditions was limited to warming the bench throughout the 2015 instalment, when the sudden retirement of Ryan Harris with less than a week until the opening Test gave him a foot in the door. 

Once the opportunity finally came at Edgbaston, however, Cummins squandered little time. His fourth spell and 18th over of the series finally brought that coveted first Ashes tour wicket – to pair nicely with the 23 he collected during the home whitewash of 2017-18 – and from that point forward he would take 28 more at a rate of one every 41 deliveries.

Since five-match clashes became the norm in 1998, only Glenn McGrath in 2001 has had a more productive Ashes series as a seam-bowling tourist from either nation, and the unsung consistency with which Cummins went about his duties is underlined by how he did not go a single innings without a wicket.

Marnus Labuschagne

Despite only coming into play half-way through the second Test as a concussion substitute for Steve Smith, Labuschagne took to Ashes cricket like a duck to water, finishing the series second only to Smith among Australia's run-makers and with an average a dash north of 50 from his seven spells at the crease.

But the 25-year-old had set the tone for that effort much earlier in the summer, plundering five County Championship centuries for Glamorgan on his way to becoming the first player in the country to tally 1,000 runs in the competition. Though he would miss the last four rounds of the competition thanks to international duty, just two players – Dom Sibley and Hassan Azad – would overtake his total by the season's end.

After opening his account with 121 against Northamptonshire on the season's opening morning, the prolific stint saw the Australian twice break his own first-class record and become the Welsh county's first player to post two tons in one home match since Mike Powell in 2003. 

A new two-year contract was swiftly offered, and back-to-back-to-back hundreds to kick off the Australian summer capped a remarkable breakout year. Wisden recognition for such form would only be fitting.

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Simon Harmer and Dom Sibley were consistent leading lights in the county game

County spearheads

Last summer was England's first since 2005 without the steady hand of Alastair Cook at their disposal, and perhaps the less said about a summer in which Jason Roy, Jack Leach and Joe Denly all ended up as Test openers the better.

Ultimately an opportunity was finally extended to Warwickshire's Dom Sibley ahead of the winter tours, following a fine summer campaign at the domestic level which saw him properly blossom into the patient if idiosyncratic player promised as far back as 2013, when he scored 242 on a flat Oval track as a 17-year-old schoolboy against an imposing Yorkshire attack.

Not only was Sibley's haul of 1,324 Championship runs the best in the country, he was the only player to pass the hallowed 1,000-run marker in the top division. After a strong finish to 2018, by mid-May the opener lay claim to centuries in each of his previous six first-class matches, and the two best scores of all followed later during outings against Kent in June (244) and Nottinghamshire at the season's close (215 not out, as well as a second innings 109).

Though England did not come calling during Wisden's traditional window, Sibley's form could well see him follow the county-dominating likes of Rory Burns (2019), Jamie Porter (2018) and Ben Duckett (2017) in claiming the prestigious leather-bound prize.

A word too for Porter's Chelmsford teammate Simon Harmer, who claimed a league-leading 83 wickets to help Essex deliver their second Division One title in three years.

Now three seasons deep into his affiliation with the Chelmsford club on a Kolpak contract, the South African off-spinner was also instrumental in turning around a miserable short-form campaign, captaining the Eagles to an astonishing T20 Blast title win and claiming 7-35 from the eight overs he sent down on his way to a clean sweep of player of the match awards on Finals Day.

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Will the Almanack's editors look past Shakib Al Hasan's two-year ban?

World Cup stars

With the key caveat of the prize being that players cannot have won it before, Wisden's team may well find it tricky to recognise the key figures from England and beyond that starred in last summer's World Cup.

From the victorious England XI, just five players – Jason Roy, Liam Plunkett, Jofra Archer, Adil Rashid and Mark Wood – have not already claimed the prize in previous years, with only Archer's breakthrough summer on the international stage positioning him as an obvious candidate from that particular crop. 

Looking at the tournament more broadly, players who could find themselves in the mix are Rohit Sharma and Mitchell Starc, the tournament's leading run-scorer and wicket-taker respectively. India's Sharma beat out David Warner by one run in one game fewer, posting a remarkable five centuries from nine outings to drive his side into the semi-finals, while Australia's Starc stood head and shoulders above any other bowler for the second World Cup running, with 27 wickets across the tournament before a solitary Ashes outing at Old Trafford.

Longtime Bangladesh talisman Shakib Al Hasan also had a World Cup for the history books, becoming the first player in a World Cup to take more than 10 wickets and score more than 400 runs with the bat. In all ODI cricket during the season, Shakib only twice missed 50 while averaging an astounding 93.25 from 11 matches, but his on-pitch exploits will be forever marred by the two-year ban he was handed in October for breaches of the ICC's anti-corruption code.

There is, of course, a chance he may still be recognised by the Almanack despite these infractions, and in 2011 – the only other year in which a Bangladeshi player has been recognised – the editors chose only to name four cricketers of the year after an unnamed Pakistan player who had been set to receive the honour was embroiled in the spot-fixing scandal of August 2010.

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