On Friday, the International Cricket Council (ICC) named the candidates for the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy. Travis Head from Australia, Pat Cummins from Australia, Virat Kohli from India, and Ravindra Jadeja, an all-rounder, have all been named for the prestigious award. Travis Head, who won the match for Australia, was nominated as the second nominee because of how well he played red-ball cricket. A left-handed bowler who played in 31 games scored 1698 runs and won both the World Test Championship and the World Cup against India. Since his debut in 2018, Head had his best year in Test cricket in 2023. Head made a name for himself in the Border Gavaskar Trophy after starting the year on a good note by hitting fifty against South Africa.
Head stuck to his aggressive style of play in all three games against India’s clinical spin bowling, while the other hitters had trouble. He was one of only three Australian batters to score 200 runs. Head only scored a hundred in this style once, in the final of the World Test Championship between Australia and India. India was making quick progress, so Head stepped in to save Australia’s ship. He quickly scored 100 runs off of just 106 balls. He scored 329 of his 570 runs in ODIs during the World Cup. During the event, he had a great strike rate of 127.51. His 137 in the World Cup final was very important as Australia won their record-setting sixth title.
Indian batter Virat Kohli is the first player in seven years to score more than 2000 runs. He will give Head a tough game. Over the course of the year, Virat scored a lot of runs in both Tests and ODIs. Kohli hit an amazing 186 in the last game of the Border Gavaskar Trophy, which took place at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. It was his first Test hundred since 2019. He then scored 121 runs against the West Indies. He then scored six hundreds in ODIs, giving him a total of fifty such scores. He passed India’s Sachin Tendulkar to become the player with the most hundreds in 50-over cricket after this.
Ravindra Jadeja, who is from the same country as Kohli, made 613 runs and took 66 wickets in 35 games. The experienced all-rounder took 22 wickets as India won the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. He was great at white-ball cricket too, with 31 ODI wickets to his name. During the World Cup, he took 16 wickets at a rate of 24.87 per over. His best game was 5/33 against South Africa at the Eden Gardens.
Finally, Pat Cummins, Australia’s leader who won the World Cup, had the best year of his life as he led the Baggy Greens to their sixth World Cup victory and victory in the WTC. In the ODIs, he hit some important runs lower down the order and also made important runs during his economic spells. The end of a great year was marked by Cummins’ second 10-wicket haul in Test cricket. The Test series between Australia and Pakistan went to Australia and they won.
