2021 Records

2021 Cricket Records – A Cricketing Diary

This article will let you know the all-format cricketing records of men’s cricket in 2021.

2021 had been a year that is more on and off for cricket and its fans.

Test cricket saw its first World Test Championship final taking place. Australia won the T20 World Cup, that’s held in UAE. The first semifinalist in the competition, Pakistan won their first-ever win against their arch-rivals India in any World Cup match.

The year was excellent for the Indian cricket team in of their longest format stand. They won 4 out of 5 Test series held in 2021. 2 of the 4 Test series wins involved Australia and England as the hosting nations. Big leap, it is! And, they finished the year with a win against South Africa in Centurion, a first for any Asian team.

We also saw cricketers calling off their cricketing days this year too. A few big names include Dale Steyn, AB de Villiers, Harbhajan Singh and Dwayne Bravo. You can find a better list of those names here.

Now let’s move on to the team-wise performances in the formats, one by one. We will start with the longest of the formats.

Test Cricket Records – 2021

After a devastating cricketing year in 2020 due to the pandemic, the game saw its rebirth in 2021 with many major changes in the way the games were held. Players went under bio-bubbles before every series and quite a number of tournaments saw postponements and cancellations.

Still, it was not that bad that we saw cricket slowly making growth.

In the beginning of the year, we saw a touring Sri Lankan team struggling to match up with South Africa, losing 2-0 to the Proteas nation.

England and India produced exhilarating away wins in their alien conditions – Sri Lanka and Australia, respectively. West Indies followed the trend in Bangladesh and Pakistan in Zimbabwe.

The champion of Tests, New Zealand, won their touring Test series in England before winning the one-game WTC finale against India in the same nation.

Interestingly, in the 19 concluded Test series 2021, the visitors won the series 9 times and the home teams 7 times. 3 Test series were drawn in this year. We didn’t include the Ashes series, which has already seen the result with Australia leading 3-0 in the 5-match Test series.

Below is the summary of all Test-playing teams in the format in 2021.

TEAMS	MATCHES	WON	LOST	DRAW	WIN%	LOSS%
Afghanistan	2	1	1	0	50	50
Australia	5	3	1	1	60	20
Bangladesh	7	1	5	1	14.28	71.43
England	15	4	9	2	26.66	60
India	14	8	3	3	57.14	21.42
New Zealand	6	3	1	2	50	16.66
Pakistan	9	7	2	0	77.77	22.22
South Africa	6	3	3	0	50	50
Sri Lanka	9	3	3	3	33.33	33.33
West Indies	10	3	5	2	30	50
Zimbabwe	5	1	4	0	20	80

Result Summary of Teams in Tests in 2021

Joe Root stood out on the batting numbers with his outstanding Test numbers, 1708 runs – the only batsman to score more than 1000 runs this year. The second-placed Rohit Sharma scored 906 runs – 802 runs lower than Root.

Root almost caught onto Mohammad Yousuf’s scintillating record he made in 2006.

Ravichandran Ashwin once again had a great year with the ball in the longest format. 2021 is his 4th year to have more than 50 Test wickets in a year. Check Ashwin’s year by year progression in Test cricket here.

Top Three Run-Scorers in Tests in 2021

Joe Root (ENG) – 1708 runs
Rohit Sharma (IND)- 906 runs
Dimuth Karunaratne (SL) – 902 runs

Click here to find the top 10 Test run-scorers in this year.

Top Three Wicket-takers in Tests in 2021

Ravichandran Ashwin (IND) – 54 wickets
Shaheen Shah Afridi (PAK) – 47 wickets
Hasan Ali (PAK) – 41 wickets

Click here to find the top 10 Test wicket-takers in this year.

ODI Cricket Records – 2021

2021 is the year that saw Oman and USA attaining ODI status. With 20 teams in the current ODI ranking chart, New Zealand tops the ICC ODI rankings with 3 wins in 3 games in 2021.

71 Test matches were played this year, and the majority of the games were played by teams – Sri Lanka, Oman, South Africa, Ireland and Bangladesh. For the record, the Indian team played only 6 ODIs, in which 3 were played in Sri Lanka by a second-string unit under Shikhar Dhawan.

Below is the summary of all ODI teams in the format in 2021.

TEAMS	MATCHES	WON	LOST	NR	WIN%
Afghanistan	3	3	0	0	100
Australia	3	2	1	0	66.66
Bangladesh	12	8	4	0	66.66
England	9	6	2	1	75
India	6	4	2	0	66.66
Ireland	14	4	8	2	33.33
Namibia	2	1	1	0	50
Nepal	6	4	2	0	66.66
Netherlands	6	3	2	1	60
New Zealand	3	3	0	0	100
Oman	10	6	3	1	66.66
Pakistan	6	2	4	0	33.33
Papa New Guinea	8	0	8	0	0
Scotland	6	4	1	1	80
South Africa	10	3	5	2	37.5
Sri Lanka	15	4	10	1	28.57
UAE	2	1	1	0	50
USA	6	3	3	0	50
West Indies	9	4	5	0	44.44
Zimbabwe	6	1	4	1	20

Result Summary of Teams in ODIs in 2021

Paul Stirling of Ireland and Dushmantha Chameera of Sri Lanka top the ODI charts of the year for most runs and wickets, respectively.

Pakistan opener Fakhar Zaman’s 193 while chasing against South Africa in Johannesburg is the highest individual score by a batsman in 2021. Check here for the highest individual batting performances every year, since 2010.

With the ball, Sandeep Lamichhane with 6-for-11 against PNG at Al Amerat is the best bowling performer of the year. It is also the only 6-for a bowler has picked this year.