The cricket players' annual report

Now that June 30 has ticked over, businesses are taking stock, monetary goals are re-set for the new financial year ahead and many an employee has learned if their efforts over the preceding 12 months merit recognition in a remunerative sense.

It’s not so different in many parts of the cricket world. For Australia, by way of example, a new selection panel headed by former Test ‘keeper Rod Marsh and including prolific ex-batsman Mark Waugh has been assigned the role of keeping the world’s top-ranked Test and ODI nation ahead of the pack.

The newly-issued central contracts announced by Cricket Australia earlier this year became effective on July 1, with the change in the respective earning capacity of many of those players reflecting an upturn in their individual and their team’s collective fortunes over the past year.

And it also represents a timely opportunity to consult the ledger and run the rule over those Test players around the world who came down on the right side – and those who may have slipped into the red and even out of the workforce altogether – of the balance sheet during the 2013-14 financial period.

Here is a snapshot of how it panned out.

Batting - Best

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Batsmen Who More Than Earned Their Keep

David Warner (Australia) – Began the tax year out of favour and out of the Test team following an untimely bout with Ashes rival Joe Root in a Birmingham boozer. But from the time he was reinstated to his rightful place as an opener he rained blows on opposing bowlers with such force and regularity that he finished as the period’s leading Test runs scorer and the fourth-ranked batsman in the world. Now that his propensity to frustrate, aggravate and bewilder has been trained on the opposition he is one of the most feared combatants in the Test arena and one of the first names pencilled on to the Australian team sheet.

Kumar Sangakkara (Sri Lanka) – If not the most complete batsman in the contemporary game then it would be difficult to find someone who engenders greater respect. In February he became just the second player in Test history (after England’s Graham Gooch) to score a triple century and a century in the same Test when he put Bangladesh to the sword. In his next Test he compiled another century – this time at Lord’s – which helped lay the foundation for his country’s historic first series win in England.

Ross Taylor (New Zealand) – In the wake of his poorly handled sacking as Black Caps captain in late 2012, Taylor seriously considered walking away from international cricket. While the fact that he was able to rediscover his appetite for the game is cricket’s gain, the way he gorged himself on the West Indies bowlers during their 2013-14 was remarkable with a career-best double century followed by tons in the next two Tests. Andrew Jones remains the only other Kiwi to notch three tons in a single series.

Angelo Mathews (Sri Lanka) – Captaincy has lifted his game to a level beyond the hard-hitting lower-order batsman and useful seamer tag Mathews carried in his early years. Entrusted at age 25 with the leadership of a team that contained numerous former skippers and established national heroes, he showed his capacity for the job by not only taking vital wickets and scoring a decisive 160 against England at Headingley, but by engaging in a heated exchange with Joe Root as the match hung in the balance that ultimately fired his teammates to a deserved and famous win.

Brendon McCullum (New Zealand) – The combative ‘keeper-batsman who has dispensed with the gloves and taken up the captaincy etched his name into New Zealand folklore in December when he became the first Kiwi to complete a Test triple century. It completed a stunning progression for a batsman formerly known as a limited-overs fence-clearer. His first Test hundred in more than three years came against the West Indies last December and was followed by a double-ton in the opening Test against India two months later, and then his record-breaking feat against the same opponents for which he was rightly feted.

AB de Villiers (South Africa) – The world’s top-ranked Test batsman for much of the past year, de Villiers’ consistency became as much a talking point as his sometimes outrageous stroke play when he recorded scores of 50-plus in 10 consecutive Tests. Of all those, perhaps the most notable was the century he didn’t complete – the lone hand of 91 he posted in the face Mitchell Johnson’s brutal hostility on a dodgy Centurion pitch in the opening Test of the Australian series in South Africa.

Batting - Not So Best

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Batsmen Who Didn’t Quite Keep Their End Of The Deal

Jacques Kallis (South Africa) – The all-round player of his generation and arguably the best the game has seen, Kallis was rendered mortal by that most unforgiving opponent – time. Following a run of six innings when he failed to reach 25, he announced that the December series against India would be his last, opting not to lock horns one last time with the touring Australians in February. But in keeping with assessments that he was like very few players before him, Kallis went out in triumph, scoring his 45th Test century in his final innings.

George Bailey (Australia) – On the strength of some remarkable one-day innings in India and his highly regarded leadership capabilities, Bailey became Australia’s oldest Test debutant for more than three decades when called on to bolster the middle-order in the Ashes. The fact that he never quite found his feet at five-day level was glossed over by his team’s five-nil whitewash but when the subsequent touring party for South Africa was announced he had slipped from the first XI to beyond his country’s best 15.

Marlon Samuels (West Indies) – No-one who has seen Samuels bat for any period doubts his talent. What has eluded him is the capacity to fulfil that potential and regularly make the right decisions. At age 33 it now appears those skills will be confined to the limited-overs arena after a horror home series against New Zealand netted him three ducks from four innings, and again cost him his place in an already struggling Test team.

M.S. Dhoni (India) – There’s a host of reasons why Dhoni shouldn’t be judged too harshly for a lean trot with the bat in Test cricket. He’s a wicketkeeper, first and foremost. There’s half a dozen guys ahead of him in the order whose job is to average more than 50. And he led his country to a World Cup for heaven’s sake. But by his standards and given his extraordinary ability, a run of more than a year and 14 innings since his career-high 224 against Australia during which he’s managed a solitary Test 50 – batting at number eight against New Zealand – is a bit thin. Just lucky his opposing skipper in the coming England Test series is feeling even more heat.

Peter Fulton (New Zealand) – Having started 2013 with twin centuries in a Test against England, ‘two-metre Peter’ looked to have finally nailed that Test opening spot that had proved elusive for the best part of a decade. Fast forward 18 months and he was again administered the axe, a casualty of a five-Test horror run that yielded not one score above 13 and a final trot of 1, 1 and 0 that meant he wasn’t part of the Black Caps XI that snared an historic series win in the Caribbean.

Alastair Cook (England) – Even the most vocal critics of English cricket must be starting to feel sympathy for their Test captain, a genuinely decent man and one whose undoubted batting skills have perished in the harsh light brought when failure meets merciless scrutiny. During his forgettable Ashes campaign he bore no resemblance to the assured opener who had dominated Australia’s bowlers four years earlier, and a six-month break from the Test game would appear to have only heightened his self-doubt and those of his growing band of sceptics.

Bowling – Best

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Bowlers Who Found the Right (Bottom) Line

Mitchell Johnson (Australia) – Quite simply the difference between Australia being a competitive Test team and reclaiming its status as the number-one ranked side in the world. Putting the wind up England for five consecutive Tests on home soil represented a remarkable turnaround for a bowler whose latent talent has never been in doubt. But to produce it for another three Tests in South Africa and leave the then top-notch Test outfit shell-shocked and beaten on their own patch added an emphatic footnote to a story of redemption best told by his extraordinary statistics from the past seven months.

Ryan Harris (Australia) – His value to Australia’s Test cause has long been recognised by those close to the team. The only problem has been that he’s ever more familiar to the travelling medical staff. It was widely believed that if Harris could get on the park and stay there for any period of time his team’s fortunes would swing even more markedly than the bowler’s late-dipping seamers and so it has proved. He is now the second-ranked Test bowler in the world and the delivery that took Alastair Cook’s off bail at the start of England’s second innings of the Ashes-deciding Test in Perth continues to make compulsive viewing. For most people except Cook.

Stuart Broad (England) – The man who some Australian fans (and even a few media outlets) decided would be their pantomime villain for the home Ashes last summer, in part because he opted to stand his ground after clubbing a catch to slip in the preceding series. But also because, due to his combative nature backed up by an abundance of talent, he undoubtedly epitomises many of the characteristics that Australians admire in their own sporting heroes. He carried an impotent England attack in Australia and more recently became the first English bowler to complete two Test hat-tricks when he managed to do it again against Sri Lanka. Not that he realised it at the time.

Trent Boult (New Zealand) – The latest in an esteemed line of New Zealand’s left-arm quicks, Boult announced himself in his debut Test in 2011 when he played an integral role in the Black Caps’ first victory in Australia for more than 25 years. And while the batting exploits of Taylor and McCullum have fuelled New Zealand’s recent Test successes, Boult has been their principal strike bowler and destroyed the West Indies when they toured last year by capturing 20 wickets at a miserly 15.40 in three Tests. His boyhood idol, former Pakistan captain Wasim Akram, would have been proud.  

Saeed Ajmal (Pakistan) – Although his bald statistics are not as stunning as Johnson’s – few players’ are – Ajmal continues to loom large as the most influential bowling element of a team since Muthiah Muralidaran gave it away with 800 Test wickets for Sri Lanka. He effectively divides batsmen into two camps – those who can decipher which way he’s turning it and those who can’t. Clearly Zimbabwe and South Africa’s batsmen were in the latter group as he took 26 wickets at less than that in four Tests. Sri Lanka’s batsmen largely could, and he managed just 10 wickets at 42 in three Tests against them. Which explains why the Australian brainstrust have hired Murali for his input ahead of their meeting with Ajmal in the UAE come October.

Dale Steyn (South Africa) – Not his best year by any measure, but pushed on through the inevitable injury issues that plague ageing quicks to be the standard carrier for his team and regain his status as the world’s top-ranked bowler. Steyn’s ability to influence matches through the late swing he can extract at sustained pace when the ball is old and new was starkly apparent during Australia’s series win in South Africa. When he got it right in the second Test at Port Elizabeth he was near unplayable and his team won comfortably. When he hobbled from the field early on day one of the next match in Cape Town, Australia seized the initiative and eventually took the series.

Bowling - Not So Best

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Bowlers Who Weren’t Able to Break Even

Rubel Hossain (Bangladesh) – It’s difficult to imagine a more thankless assignment than trying to bowl express pace in Bangladeshi conditions, and Hossain has shown in limited-overs competitions that he can be a force. In Test matches however, he hasn’t quite had the same impact though at age 24 he still has time. After a couple of wicketless Tests – the latter of which saw Sri Lanka declare at 6-730 and canter to a massive win by an innings and almost 250 runs – the selectors decided some of that time might be better spent on the sidelines.

Robin Peterson (South Africa) – After Imran Tahir was deemed too expensive and too unpredictable for the rampaging Australian batsmen, South Africa again turned to the left-arm spin of 34-year-old Peterson. That was despite him pocketing an unflattering 0-111 in Abu Dhabi several months earlier, in the same Test that Ajmal had bowled Pakistan to victory. The Australians duly went after him in the opening Test, he bled runs at more than five and half an over and was not seen for the remainder of that series.

Tino Best (West Indies) – Best has many of the attributes inherent in great West Indian quicks of the past – aggression, confidence and a fiercely competitive nature. What he lacks is height, and wickets. When conditions suit, his zippy bowling can be a handful but on flat decks he often ends up as fodder. That’s what happened in New Zealand where his eight wickets from three Tests cost him 46 runs apiece. And in India prior to that where they were worth almost double that. He didn’t make muster for the Kiwis’ return visit to the Caribbean last month.

Morne Morkel (South Africa) – In light of the vulnerability some Australian batsmen had shown against the rising ball in recent times, Morkel’s height and awkward bounce at pace were seen as potentially the decisive weapon when the battle for the number one Test ranking raged in February. But apart from one memorable spell against Michael Clarke – which, tellingly, Clarke negotiated without surrendering his wicket – Morkel was largely ineffective. That fact, coupled with injury to Dale Steyn and Vernon Philander’s lack of presence, explains why Clarke’s team now holds pole position on the ICC Test rankings.

Ish Sodhi (New Zealand) – Probably a bit harsh to include 21-year-old Sodhi who made his Test debut in October last year after just one season of first-class cricket in New Zealand and is still considered the work experience boy. Bowling leg spin in the Shaky Isles has never been hugely rewarding, nor has it produced vast numbers of exponents in India where he was born. And while his aggressive approach and preparedness to spin the ball as hard as possible means he’s coughed up runs in large volumes, a career-best 4-96 in his most recent Test outing in Trinidad suggests he’ll be vying with Australia’s young leggie James Muirhead for the title of most exciting emerging spinner – certainly in the southern hemisphere.

Graeme Swann (England) – Also a little unfair on the guy who came to Australia last summer carrying the crown of world’s best off-spinner on the back of another decisive contribution in England’s Ashes-winning campaign of 2013. But that’s where it all turned to dust for England’s best spinner in a generation as Australia’s batsmen went after him with vengeance. From 26 wickets at 29 on England’s spin-friendly pitches, he managed just seven at 80 from the first three Tests in Australia and promptly called stumps on his career. He is now earning his keep as a commentator.