After 32 Tests, 33,408 runs, 1,016 wickets, it’s time at last for the Guardian’s tenth annual men’s Test XI of the year. This year’s selectors were Vic Marks, Ali Martin, Rob Smyth, Tanya Aldred, Taha Hashim, Geoff Lemon, Adam Collins, Emma John, Tim de Lisle, Daniel Gallan and Andy Bull. Depressingly, some teams (South Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh) played so little this year that it was hard to pick any of their players, which feels like a worrying sign of the way the game is going, but for now …
1) Usman Khawaja
1,168 runs at an average of 55
You’d need a hard heart not to take pleasure in watching the late years of Khawaja’s career after all his ups and downs along the way. He’s been better than ever since he came back into Test cricket in 2022. This year he made three monumental hundreds against South Africa in Sydney, India in Ahmedabad and England at Edgbaston. There were another six fifties in between them, which made him the leading run-scorer in the format this year, and the only unanimous selection in this XI.
2) Rohit Sharma
540 runs at 49
Two years into his tenure it still feels like Rohit Sharma needs to put his stamp on the captaincy. His batting, though, made the same big impression as always. He had a hard job of it too, since eight of his 11 innings games were against Australia. He made one, brilliant, century against them on a spinning pitch in Nagpur when no one else in the top-six on either side passed fifty, and scored another ton on tour against the West Indies in July. He did it in style, hitting as many sixes on his own as Khawaja, Zak Crawley, and David Warner managed between them.
3) Kane Williamson
696 runs at 58
Williamson stepped back from the captaincy at the start of the year, though he already seemed so self-effacing it was a surprise to find he had any room left behind him to retreat into. In the ranks, he sometimes struggled to get in, but when he did he was as effective as ever. He won man-of-the-match for his 132 in a famous one-run victory after New Zealand were made to follow on by England in Wellington, then made an unbeaten hundred and then another double back-to-back against Sri Lanka, and capped it off with another century against Bangladesh in Sylhet.
4) Joe Root
787 runs at 66, 8 wickets at an average of 18
People meeting Root for the first time are always surprised to find he is so tall. He’s 6ft 2in or so, a height which is entirely at odds with the impishness of a man who thinks it is a good idea to try and hit a reverse ramp shot off the very first ball of his innings against Pat Cummins. Root made two fine centuries this year, against New Zealand in Wellington and Australia at Edgbaston. And if he was a little less effective than he used to be when he was grinding out all those hidebound hundreds in the dog days of his captaincy, he had never been more entertaining to watch.
5) Travis Head
679 runs at 42
At the end of the year Head was appointed Australia’s joint vice-captain in what felt like a clear sign of his growing importance to the team. His batting can be a little more skittish than some of the great Australian middle order players who have gone before him, but he’s irrepressible when it sticks. And if the bowlers had some success by bowling short against him, he still picked up plenty of runs while they were doing it, especially when he scored his rollocking run-a-ball 163 in the final of the World Test Championship.
6) Ravindra Jadeja
281 runs at 35, 33 wickets at 19
India ask a lot of Jadeja, picking him as high as No 6 in the order and often playing him as their sole spinner. But he’s equal to it all. He ripped Australia apart in the spring, when he took 22 wickets at 18 in four Tests, including his career-best figures of seven for 42 at Delhi. In that same game he also made a crucial four-hour 70. He played it the other way in the World Test Championship final a couple of months later, when he rattled off a run-a-ball 48 to go with his three for 58 in the second innings. His fielding was as superb as always, too.
7) Lorcan Tucker
351 runs at 44, 7 dismissals
The first Irishman ever to make one of the Guardian’s team of the year, Tucker only played four Tests, but made almost as many runs in them as Alex Carey did in twelve for Australia. Tucker has only played 19 first class games, and said in June it felt like he was “learning Test cricket on the job”. But he’s a quick study. In Mirpur, he scored his first century after coming in when his team were 51 for 5. He followed that with an 80 in a heavy defeat to Sri Lanka in Galle, and 44 against England at Lord’s.
8) Ravichandran Ashwin
142 runs at 24, 40 wickets at 16
The world’s best Test bowler didn’t even get into India’s XI for the World Test Championship final, a decision which may well have cost his side the title. You didn’t even need hindsight to see it. Ashwin took 25 wickets at 18 each against Australia in the spring. He was more economical than anyone more incisive than him, and more incisive than anyone more economical. One of the game’s great problem-solvers, he ought to be seen as one of the greatest to ever play it, if he could only figure out how to hold down his spot in the team.
9) Pat Cummins (c)
225 runs at 16, 32 wickets at 33
The lingering image of Cummins’ year is of him batting at Edgbaston, where his unbeaten 44 stole the first Ashes Test out from under England. The series, the summer, turned on that innings, which typified Cummins’s captaincy. He led his team through some very heavy weather. They were buffeted by India’s bowlers and England’s batsmen, and bruised by criticism from the press and the public about everything from his opinions on the climate crisis, to the spirit of cricket. And he brought them through it as world Test champions and Ashes holders.
10) Mitchell Starc
147 runs at 15, 34 wickets at 29
After eight years, Starc finally signed on for another stint in the Indian Premier League this December. He went for £1.9m in the auction, which made him the league’s most expensive player, and was a reminder of just how much he could have been earning all the years if he hadn’t preferred to concentrate on playing for Australia. He arrived in England with a point to prove, he had a mediocre record here, and unsure even whether he would win a place in the team. He left it, two months later, as the leading wicket-taker in the Ashes series, with 23 at 27.
11) Stuart Broad
112 runs at 11, 38 wickets at 26
Mark Wood bowled quicker, Chris Woakes took his wickets cheaper, and Josh Hazlewood had a lower strike rate, but there was just no way to leave Broad out of this XI. He had one of the great seasons, from his one-man phoney war against Australia in the press, his first delivery to Marnus Labuschagne, his cussed batting in the aftermath of Jonny Bairstow’s stumping at Lord’s, his final six, the bail switch, those last two wickets. And at the end of it all he somehow ended up with more wickets than any other quick. Forget boys’ own endings, Broad’s own was as good as they get.
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