5 Players Who Underperformed In 2021: The world may have entered into the new year, but people would still ponder over the year gone by. The ups and downs; the highs and lows; the gains and losses. International cricketers, as much elite and clear-headed as they are, are no exception to having thoughts and regrets about their past.
Some of them, with the fast-paced game, have made plans for improving, while some already have.
Here we look at 5 such international cricketers who endured a difficult 2021 and would hope for a better 2022.
Superstar India all-rounder Hardik Pandya was a big talking point last year. He would have hoped for a successful 2021 after being in thunderous form in IPL 2020. But, it wasn’t to be. While the selectors and management remained shut about his bowling fitness, his batting took a nosedive.
Pandya managed just 127 runs in IPL 2021 at a strike rate of 113 and carried that poor form in the T20 World Cup as well, where he scored 69 runs in 5 games. He bowled on rare occasions. His year ended with not being retained by Mumbai Indians. Pandya, clearly, had a disappointing 2021.
Eoin Morgan
Eoin Morgan was another big name player who had a forgettable 2021 on an individual level although his teams did well. Morgan marches KKR in the IPL final and led England to the T20 World Cup semi-final, however, with the bat he averaged just 11 in the IPL and scored managed only 68 runs in the T20 World Cup.
Morgan raised up just a solitary half-century in 20 ODI+T20I matches last year.
Ross Taylor
Ross Taylor, New Zealand’s all-time leading run-scorer, has decided to retire from international cricket at the end of the home season in April. However, he has been in an underwhelming form going into 2022.
Taylor played 7 matches last year – 6 Tests and 1 ODI – in which he could muster 224 runs at 22, registering just a single fifty-plus score. His knock of 47 in the WTC final though was a crucial one.
Stuart Broad
Stuart Broad would have been the first one to admit that he had a poor 2021 with the ball; he did admit that after his five-wicket haul at the SCG in January against Australia. Broad picked 12 wickets in 7 Tests last year.
His bowling average of 39.5 was the fourth-worst for bowlers who bowled in at least 10 innings. Broad’s worst bowling show came against India when in 2 away and 1 home Test, he managed just a solitary wicket against the Asian giants.
Ajinkya Rahane
Nobody in the Indian Test batting had a worse year than Ajinkya Rahane, who was by the end of 2021 dropped as the Test vice-captain. And while Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara averaged much better than Rahane, despite their own struggles, Rahane averaged 20 last year.
In 13 Tests, he notched up just a couple of half-centuries and his place was under tremendous question in the second half of the year.
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