Pakistan wicketkeeper batsman Mohammad Rizwan has been in the form of his life in 2021. With Bradmanesque numbers in T20 cricket this year, it is hard to see anyone topping Rizwan’s number in a single year.
He has played 27 T20Is in 2021, scoring 1,239 runs at 72.88, with a century and 11 fifties to boot. These are unreal numbers and speak volumes of the consistency shown by Pakistan’s T20 opener.
Record Making Rizwan
Rizwan has now scored the most runs in a calendar year, breaching the 1,000-run mark for the first time in T20I cricket. Only his opening partner and skipper Babar Azam has managed to get close to him in terms of runs.
Rizwan also became the first player to hit 10+ fifties in a year, and also the first to hit 100+ fours in one calendar year. These are plainly ridiculous numbers.
He’s also at the top of the list for most T20 runs in a calendar year, having amassed 1,911 runs so far playing for Pakistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Multan Sultans in 2021.
Among all batters to feature in 15+ innings in a calendar year, Rizwan’s average of 75.06 is 27 units better than the next best.
The wicketkeeper-batter has one more T20I to go this year, and, if he plays it, will end up with 29 matches in 2021. Currently, Rizwan is tied at 27 with Babar and Bangladesh’s Afif Hossain for the most T20I appearances in a single year.
Of all 34 men’s T20I cricketers to play 20+ games in a year, only two – MS Dhoni and Jasprit Bumrah – belong to a year (2016) that’s not 2021 or 2019.
The 2019 batch predominantly belongs to the batch that played in the T20 World Cup Qualifier that year. The volume of T20I cricket this year has been exceptionally high.
That’s also why it’s a feat unlikely to be repeated – the combination of quality and quantity for Rizwan have worked immensely well. It’s unlikely that a player will feature in as many T20Is in the future, given how many T20 leagues run across the year.
Rizwan has been a revelation at the top, combining with Babar Azam to make for one of modern-day white-ball cricket’s most prolific opening pairings.
