Wisden name five Cricketers of the Year for 2014
April 8, 2015 03:55 pm
Sri Lanka great Kumar Sangakkara has been named as the Leading Cricketer in the World in the 2015 Wisden Cricketers` Almanack.
Moeen Ali, Gary Ballance, Adam Lyth, Jeetan Patel and Angelo Mathews have been named as Wisden’s five Cricketers of the Year.
Worcestershire star Ali, prolific in county cricket in recent seasons, made the breakthrough to the England Test and one-day teams in 2014-15 and he is pictured on the front cover.
Ballance cemented his place in the England Test team with some fine performances last summer. The loss of Jonathan Trott to a stress-related illness left a void at No 3 in the line-up, but Ballance filled it magnificently, scoring 590 runs in his first 10 innings.
Mathews had a stellar year for Sri Lanka, helping them to the World T20 title and then, as captain, scoring back-to-back Test centuries to guide his team to their first series win in England.
They then beat Pakistan, won the Asia Cup and trounced England 5-2 in an ODI series.
Sri Lanka team-mate Kumar Sangakkara was named as Wisden’s Leading Cricketer in the World in the 152nd edition, which is published on Thursday.
That makes him just the second player to regain that annual status.
Sangakkara, set to complete his international retirement when he plays his final Test this year, has raised even his own astonishing standards in a record-breaking run of form.
Wisden grants its global No 1 position for the previous year to Sangakkara - only India batsman Virender Sehwag has previously been named twice - after he made an all-time record 2,868 international runs in 2014, including a triple-century.
