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Virat Kohli & Mithali Raj named Wisden’s Leading Cricketers in the World

by Wisden Staff 2 minute read

India captain Virat Kohli has been named Leading Cricketer in the World for a second year running in the 2018 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.

Writing in the Almanack, out now, editor Lawrence Booth said: “For the second year in a row, Indian captain Virat Kohli is Wisden’s Leading Cricketer in the World. In all formats in 2017, he scored 2,818 runs – more than 700 ahead of Joe Root in second place. Three of his five Test hundreds were doubles, and the other two unbeaten, and his 1,460 one-day international runs were unsurpassed.”

It’s been a year of gongs for Kohli, who was also named ODI Cricketer of the Year and overall Cricketer of the Year at the ICC awards in January following a sensational 2017 for him and his team.

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India’s national captains completed a clean sweep in the new edition of the Almanack, with Test and ODI captain Mithali Raj named as the Leading Women’s Cricketer in the World.

Booth said: “Mithali Raj made it an Indian double after she was named the Leading Woman Cricketer in the World. In the course of captaining her country to within a whisker of the World Cup title, she became the leading run-scorer in the history of women’s one-day internationals, and completed her seventh successive half-century, another record.”

Raj’s India lost out to England in a scintillating World Cup final at Lord’s, with 2018 Wisden Almanack cover star and Cricketer of the Year Anya Shrubsole taking six wickets for the home side.

Elsewhere three of England Women’s World Cup winners were among the traditional Five Cricketers of the Year, along with West Indies’ Shai Hope and Essex’s Jamie Porter, while Rashid Khan was the first ever to be named Leading Twenty20 Cricketer in the World.

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Subscribers to Wisden Cricket Monthly can buy the 2018 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack for the exclusive price of £32.50. Details will be sent to subscribers by post and email, and can be obtained by emailing [email protected].

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