Wisden Cricketers' Almanack is the go-to cricket reference book; a sort of bible of cricket that people have held in high esteem for over a hundred and fifty years. What Wisden says, carries weight, so when two Indian cricketers were named Wisden Player of the Year, Indians were delighted.
Wisden named the Indian as the Leading Woman Cricketer in the World. Earlier, in December 2018, she was named Women’s ODI Player of the Year by the ICC.
Wisden named Virat Kohli as the Leading cricketer in the World, having scored 2735 runs collectively from all the three formats of the game in the past year.
Tammy Beaumont, Rory Burns, Jos Buttler, Sam Curran and Virat Kohli were named the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year 2019 and Rashid Khan of Afghanistan was named the leading Twenty20 cricketer in the world.
Kohli has received this honour a third time. Only Sir Don Bradman and Jack Hobbs have won it more times. Earlier this year, he also won the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for ICC Cricketer of the Year, (for the second time running), the ICC Test and the ODI Player of the Year awards as well.
She currently opens the batting for India and has been a high scorer for her team: 669 runs in ODIs and 662 runs in and T20Is last year. However she would like to improve, particularly by taking a leaf out of Kohli's book as a great finisher.
With Indian players sweeping the top awards, Indian cricket fans were predictably delighted.
According to fans Virat Kohli is a GOAT (great of all time). Not only does he deserve the award, he has become addicted to winning it.
Among the many prestigious awards bestowed upon Virat Kohli, this tweet makes a list of the most important.
Those who make it their business to make jokes and memes about the performance of the Royal Challengers Bangalore team (of which Kohli is the captain) are perhaps restraining themselves right now. Maybe they are conserving their energies until the next RCB loss? Meanwhile everyone is waxing eloquent about the well-deserved awards for Smriti Mandhana and Virat Kohli as leading Wisden Cricketers of the Year.
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