Cricket’s Best Players in the World

Benjamin Abigail | 12:42am GMT 08 January 2023

Many world’s top sportsmen and women cut their teeth in cricket’s amateur leagues. If you’re a cricket fanatic, have some serious cash to spend, or want to know who’s who in the game, the ten players listed below are your best bets.

Our rankings incorporate all ICC match types into a single total for each player. The list does not contain any players that have retired. The ‘World XI’ is a made-up squad of the finest cricketers across all formats, and this score is comparable to the ones used to choose its members. 

Many of the best online cricket betting sites that offer casinoreviewers no deposit bonus Australia also feature odds on player performances and other factors, in addition to individual odds on the sport’s top players.

Babar Azam

Babar Azam and Virat Kohli take turns at the top of the ICC ODI best batsman rankings, establishing themselves as two of the best batters in the world. For over a decade, Pakistan’s all-format captain has been the country’s top run-scorer.

Through setting new records for most half-centuries and total runs in a T20 World Cup, Azam reclaimed his position as the best T20 batsman at the 2021 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup. He has the record for most runs scored in a three-game ODI series and is the fastest player to reach 2,000 runs in T20.

M.S. Dhoni

Although Mahendra Singh Dhoni is no longer a member of India’s national cricket team, he remains one of the IPL’s most accomplished captains. He has been included in the ICC ODI and T20 Teams of the Decade and has won the ODI Player of the Year award on two separate occasions.

Dhoni guided India to victory in three ICC limited-overs tournaments before shifting his focus to the Twenty20 format of the Indian Premier League. He, like Kholi, has won India’s top civilian honors and the country’s top sports honor.

Shakib Al Hasan

Shakib Al Hasan, a holder of numerous international records, is widely considered the best all-around cricketer in the world. He has taken more wickets than any Bangladeshi player in all international formats. He is the first player in ODI history to have scored 5,000 runs and taken 250 wickets in the shortest time.

Al Hasan has scored 1,000 runs and taken 100 wickets in T20 cricket. He has more T20 and T20 World Cup wickets than anyone else. While he was leading Bangladesh, they competed in 50 matches, winning 23. He is the only player in the history of the International Cricket Council to top all three individual rankings (ODI, Test, and T20).

Rashid Khan

In 2018, Afghanistan played India in a Test match for the first time in its history. One of those 11 players was Rashid Khan, who has had a stratospheric rise to the top of the ODI rankings despite having the most costly debut bowling numbers in cricket history.

Khan, then only 20, made history in September 2019 when he was named the youngest multi-format skipper in cricket. He also holds the record for being the youngest player to ever lead the ICC Player Rankings for bowling in both the One-Day International and Twenty-Twenty formats. He achieved 100 T20 wickets faster than anyone else. 

Quentin de Kock

The fastest South African to 1,000 runs in ODIs is Quentin de Kock. He is the quickest wicketkeeper to attain 150 test dismissals and the second wicketkeeper-opener to get a century while leading his team in one-day internationals.

By the time he played in his 20th ODI, de Kock had scored five hundred. De Kock is the fastest player to reach 12 ODI hundreds, surpassing Hashim Amla’s previous record by seven games; he was named Cricketer of the Year at Cricket South Africa’s 2017 and 2020 Annual Awards. In December 2020, he led South Africa in the 2019-2021 ICC World Test Championship against Sri Lanka in a two-match Test series.

Virat Kohli

Virat Kohli is one of the most revered cricketers of all time, for a good reason. He has the second-most ODI centuries, behind only the great Sachin Tendulkar, and is the quickest player to reach 10,000 runs in the format.

The Indian skipper is the only player in T20 World Cup history to win Player of the Tournament twice. He has won various honors from the International Cricket Council (ICC) and five Polly Umrigar Awards for International Cricketer of the Year. ESPN and Forbes recognized Kohli as one of the most valuable athletes in the world, while Time named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Andre Russell

Andre Russell has played in over 200 T20 matches for various T20 clubs across several different leagues worldwide, solidifying his place as one of the game’s all-time greats. Two ICC World Twenty20 triumphs can be attributed to his efforts on behalf of the West Indies cricket team. Russell won most valuable player honors in the Indian, Caribbean, and Bangladesh T20 leagues between 2016 and 2020.

Russell won the prize for the most sixes hit in a Twenty20 tournament in the Indian Premier League. Twice in Jamaica, he was named “Player of the Series.” He led the Pakistan Super League in wickets taken in 2016 and was named Player of the Tournament for his work with the Rajshahi Royals in the Bangladesh Premier.

Rohit Sharma

After winning the ICC One-Day International Player of the Year award in 2017 and again in 2020, Rohit Sharma has cemented his place as one of the game’s finest openers. Sharma is the first player to strike three ODI double-centuries and holds the record for the greatest individual score in an ODI.

Among batters, the Indian T20 captain is the only one to have scored five hundred in a single World Cup. He is also the first to have scored two centuries in his first two World Cup innings as an opening batsman. In 2020, he received India’s top sports accolade, the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award.

Ben Stokes

Benjamin Stokes is regarded as one of the world’s top swing bowlers due to his ability to maintain average speeds of 87 miles per hour. He is currently the Test and English records holder for the fastest double-century.

Twice Stokes has been named Wisden’s World’s Leading Cricketer. He won the ICC’s Best Cricketer of the Year award, the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy, in January 2020. The Indian Premier League pays him the most of any foreign player. 

Kane Williamson

In any format, New Zealand’s national team is led by Kane Williamson. At the 2019 Cricket World Cup, he led New Zealand to the championship game, and for his performances, he was named Player of the Tournament. 

In the ICC’s Test Team of the Decade, Williamson is the only representative from New Zealand. The Black Caps, under his direction, won the first-ever ICC World Test Championship in 2021. His leadership has brought a new period of prosperity to his country, and his ability to take the initiative when it matters most makes him an irreplaceable asset.