Haseeb Hameed was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year for 2025. Ali Martin’s piece on Hameed originally appeared in the 2026 edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.
The Five Cricketers of the Year represent a tradition that dates back to 1889, making this the oldest individual award in cricket. The Five are picked by the editor, and the selection is based, primarily but not exclusively, on excellence in and/or influence on the previous English season. No one can be chosen more than once.
It was fitting that the final image from Nottinghamshire’s golden summer should be of Haseeb Hameed caressing four through the covers at a sun-drenched Trent Bridge. The new county champions had no weak links, essential for breaking Surrey’s three-year hold on the title, but Hameed was primus inter pares all the same: a thoughtful, empathetic captain who led with a deluge of runs.
Those qualities were on display during the formality of the final chase. With his team needing just 18 to beat Warwickshire – the trophy had been secured the day before – Hameed dropped anchor to ensure his opening partner, Ben Slater, scored the 15 he needed to reach 1,000 for the season. “We tend to play down milestones, but I think they can be really important,” says Hameed. “We make a big thing of celebrating each other’s successes at the club. And every single person who played for us across the season genuinely contributed along the way.”
Hameed was well past the mark himself, recording a season’s-best 1,258 runs, and an average of 66, the highest in Division One of those with 200 runs. Upright, correct, and with low-slung hands looking to score, not merely survive, Hameed twice carried his bat, and converted two of his four centuries into doubles. His first-innings 122 in the final round was leadership personified, while a home win over Sussex in April was among his favourites. On a surface doing plenty, he crafted 85 and 62 not out against Test seamers Ollie Robinson and Jayden Seales, and sent belief coursing through the squad.
It was no coincidence that Peter Moores was the head coach who revived Hameed’s career, which had included a promising Test debut at Rajkot aged 19 in November 2016, before injury intervened. Both men had experienced two largely unfulfilled spells in the national set-up, before rebuilding their careers in domestic cricket. “Pete gives me responsibility,” says Hameed, who was appointed captain in 2024. “I feed off feeling valued. I would be stupid not to pick his brains. But he has been a great mentor, in that he gives me just enough guidance to make me still feel I’m doing it my own way.”
HASEEB HAMEED was born in Bolton on January 17, 1997, and first honed his batting on an all-weather surface at Rawsthorne Park near his family home. “The older I’ve got, the more I’ve appreciated the start of the journey,” he says. An initial lack of resources was trumped by the passion of his father, Ismail, and older brothers Safwaan and Nuaman. Starting club cricket at Tonge, before swapping to Farnworth Social Circle, Hameed joined Lancashire’s Academy at the age of nine, and received a sports scholarship to Bolton Grammar.
At Lancashire, he continued to play above his age group, enjoying a first-team debut in 2015 at 18, and a breakout summer of 1,198 first-class runs in 2016. A call-up for England’s tour of Bangladesh and India produced a precocious 82 on debut at Rajkot – plus the nickname “Baby Boycott” – and was the perfect narrative in his father’s home state of Gujarat. Despite suffering a broken finger during his third appearance, at Mohali, he made a brave unbeaten 59 down the order. Full of admiration, Virat Kohli, then India’s captain, hailed “a great prospect, a future star in all forms”.
But it was the first of three injury setbacks inside a year. A low-key Lions tour in February 2017 was followed by surgery to correct a sinus issue, then another broken finger at the end of the summer. In between, his form with Lancashire fell away so badly that England looked elsewhere; in 2018, it fell off a cliff. “The first injury affected my grip and, each time there was a recovery period, that compromised my preparations,” says Hameed. “Coupled with expectations – I suddenly wasn’t allowed a few low scores without it being a big deal – it all became a bit much.”
Patience grew thin at Old Trafford, director of cricket Paul Allott even going public with the club’s dissatisfaction, before Hameed was released in 2019. Looking back, he puts it down to the lack of a “father figure”, following the departure of Ashley Giles as head coach three years earlier. In swooped Nottinghamshire: director of cricket Mick Newell sold him the vision of a club with ambition, and Moores was ready to refurbish a game and a strike-rate that were both going nowhere. He started with some pivotal one-on-one net sessions when the pandemic delayed the 2020 domestic season.
“I knew Pete from his time at Lancashire,” says Hameed. “He would get me training with the first team when I was a kid in the Academy. When we came back together at Notts, he had just been doing some work with Joe Root. I left a ball, and he told me straight away that Rooty would have hit it for four. His thing was, the best players don’t necessarily play the best balls better than anyone else. But, for anything less than that, they put more pressure back on. It changed my mindset, and people saw an immediate difference.”
But England got too giddy, too soon. An encouraging first season at Trent Bridge, in which he averaged just shy of 40, led to a recall during the 2021 home series against India. Two century opening stands with Rory Burns then secured a spot on the Ashes tour, only for his form – like the team’s – to collapse inside the Covid bubble. “I fell back into survival mode,” says Hameed, who averaged ten across eight largely shotless innings. “When you get like that, you are a sitting duck against that quality of opposition.”
It left his England career on hold after the stiffest of examinations: ten caps, all against India or Australia, and just three on home soil. “My international ambitions will always be there,” he says. “And I do think that players should be allowed to go away and improve. But it is a huge privilege to be leading a historic club like Nottinghamshire. It keeps me in the here and now, and hopefully in time that brings the results I want.”
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