The International Cricket Council (ICC), on Thursday, announced the talisman Pakistani batsman and captain Babar Azam as the winner of the ICC Men’s ODI Cricketer of the Year Award for the year 2022.
Babar Azam became the first Pakistani player to win this prestigious award twice and is amongst the few players to get it in consecutive years; he’d also won the ICC Men’s ODI Cricketer of the Year Award for the year 2021.
“There were match-winning knocks, spell-binding stroke-play and memorable moments from a personal perspective,” said the ICC while naming Babar Azam as the best men’s player in ODI in the year gone by.
In 2022, Babar Azam scored 679 runs from 9 ODIs at an average of 84.87 with three centuries and 5 fifties – making it 8 scores of fifty-plus in 9 innings!
Among Full Member nations, only the Indian pair of Shreyas Iyer, Shikhar Dhawan and West Indies pair Shai Hope and Shamrah Brooks scored more runs than Babar in ODIs in 2022, but all of them played plenty more matches than Babar and averaged a lot less than the Pakistani skipper.
Nobody racked up more ODI tons last year than Babar, who sprinted to the number 1 ranking in men’s ODI batting list. It’s a title that Babar has held firmly onto since July 2021 and on current form, has no intention of letting go easily.
The year included Babar bringing up his fastest-ever ODI century, off 73 balls, against Australia in a big run-chase in Lahore, helping Pakistan record their highest-ever successful chase in ODIs.
List of the ICC Men’s ODI Cricketer of the Year from 2010 to 2022:
| Year | Winner |
| 2010 | AB de Villiers |
| 2011 | Kumar Sangakkara |
| 2012 | Virat Kohli |
| 2013 | Kumar Sangakkara |
| 2014 | AB de Villiers |
| 2015 | AB de Villiers |
| 2016 | Quinton de Kock |
| 2017 | Virat Kohli |
| 2018 | Virat Kohli |
| 2019 | Rohit Sharma |
| 2020 | (award not given) |
| 2021 | Babar Azam |
| 2022 | Babar Azam |
