While Indian cricket fans are glued to the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL), a T20 tournament, there is some excellent news for India from the Test arena, the traditional format. A clutch of Indian cricketers has made history by winning a bagful of accolades from the world’s most prestigious cricket publication — Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack — for their outstanding performances in the five-Test series in England last year.
Captain Shubman Gill (754 runs), Ravindra Jadeja (516 runs and seven wickets), Rishabh Pant (479), and Mohammed Siraj (23 wickets) were picked among Wisden’s ‘Five Cricketers of the Year 2025’ — an unprecedented honour for so many Indians in one edition of the famous yellow-jacket annual, for making a lasting impact in the English summer. England’s Haseeb Hameed was the fifth cricketer chosen, having captained Nottinghamshire to the English County Championship title.
Significantly, only once has Wisden picked all five from one country, and on two occasions it has picked four from one country. In the 1949 edition, it chose five Australians; in 1973 and 1994, it picked four Australians each.
Double honour for Gill
Importantly for India, Gill was also adjudged the winner of the Wisden Trophy for the best performance in a Test by a man or a woman. He clinched the honour for his scores of 269 and 161 in the second Test, which helped India beat England by 336 runs and level the series 1-1.
Gill missed by just 26 runs equalling the all-time record of most runs in a Test, set by England’s Graham Gooch against India at Lord’s, London, in 1990. Gill’s 430 remains second to Gooch’s 456 (333 and 123).
The series, which was full of drama, comebacks, and intense competition, was eventually drawn 2-2, after India, riding on Siraj’s magnificent second-innings five-wicket haul, won the fifth Test by a mere six runs.
Siraj, who had taken four wickets in the first innings, was adjudged the Player of the Match for his exploits at The Oval, London, while Gill and England’s Harry Brook shared the Player of the Series award. The Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy was shared by the two teams.
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Honours for Deepti
The other two Indian winners were Deepti Sharma, the leading woman all-rounder, and left-handed opener Abhishek Sharma. Deepti was named the Player of the 2025 World Cup for her 215 runs, including three half-centuries, and 22 wickets. She thus became the first player, male or female, to achieve the double of 200 runs and 20 wickets in a 50-over World Cup.
Left-handed Abhishek Sharma was picked as the ‘Leading T20 Cricketer in the World’ for becoming the first batsman to score over 1,000 T20 runs in quick time, along with his other exploits as an opener.
Another Indian, Anand Mohan Gupta, a non-cricketer from Raipur, won the Wisden Writing Competition for his piece titled ‘Over the wrist, into the world’, chosen by Wisden’s editors.
Also, there was another equally important Indian who did not win an award but was the central figure in the Wisden Photograph of the Year — the 2025 World Cup-winning captain, Harmanpreet Kaur, photographed by Matthew Lewis.
Australian left-arm fast bowler Mitchell Starc was named the Leading Men’s Cricketer in the World 2025, an award that Jasprit Bumrah won in 2024, along with other Indians in previous years.
The selection criteria
Wisden Almanack’s editor, Lawrence Booth, who took over the reins in 2011, said it was not too difficult to pick the five cricketers as he stuck to the established criteria.
“The thinking never changes: who are the five best eligible cricketers? Remember the two criteria: the emphasis is on the English summer, and you can’t have been chosen more than once. To my mind, the five I chose were the best five, regardless of nationality,” Booth, who is incidentally married to an Indian, told Patriot.
Asked if, by any chance, a thought crossed his mind that he ran the risk of being labelled biased by the vast and loyal readership of the Almanack for picking so many Indians and only one Englishman, Booth offered a candid reply.
“It would be a funny kind of bias, towards a country that isn’t your own. If readers think I’m sucking up to India, they clearly don’t read Wisden very much: my ‘Editor’s Notes’ routinely hold the BCCI to account. If anything, I’m accused of being anti-Indian, which is nonsense too,” he said, referring to some strong comments on Wisden’s X handle for ignoring English cricketers.
Rahul’s close miss
Booth revealed that KL Rahul, who was the third-highest run-aggregator on either side with 532 at 53.20, could have been the fifth Indian among the top five, but he missed out by a whisker. He hammered two centuries and two half-centuries and was placed behind Gill (754 at 75.40 in five Tests, four hundreds) and England’s Joe Root (537 at 67.12 in five Tests, three centuries and one fifty).
“I try not to get into ranking the five cricketers, though it would have been hard to omit Shubman Gill after he scored four hundreds amid all the pressure of captaining the side in the post-Kohli and Rohit era. KL Rahul was unlucky to miss out,” he said.
Every year, Wisden organises a dinner to celebrate the release of the annual edition at the famous Long Room at Lord’s Ground, London. The publication presents personalised copies of the Wisden Almanack to each winner. This time, however, only Hameed among the Five Cricketers of the Year was present on April 14, as the Indians are busy with the IPL and Deepti is touring South Africa with the Indian T20 team.
Booth seems to have given up hope of getting all the Indian winners together for the honour at a later date. “I’d be surprised if we ever get them together. The best I can probably hope for is to hand over their Wisdens on an individual basis whenever our paths cross,” he said.
Dramatic cover photo
The Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack has traditionally and strictly printed a famous woodcut of two cricketers on its yellow cover. But in 2003, it started printing photographs of cricketers. The 2026 edition has Siraj and speedster Chris Woakes in one frame, taken during the tense final moments of the fifth and final Test at The Oval, London.
Booth explained the reason for choosing this photo. “We felt the climax to the Oval Test, when Chris Woakes walked out at No. 11 with his arm in a sling, and Mohammed Siraj was doing everything he could to drag India over the line, was the summer’s most dramatic moment. We were very happy to find a picture that captured the heroism of both,” he said.
Siraj, an Urdu word that means lamp, shone brightly with the ball and ended the series as the top wicket-taker on either side, as he bowled his heart out to capture 23 scalps at 32.43. His tally included two five-wicket hauls and a four-wicket burst that helped India draw the series.
The other Indians who have appeared on the Almanack’s cover include Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, and Virat Kohli.
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