After 45 Tests, 1,575 wickets, 43,424 runs, and countless hours of argument, here is the Guardian’s Test XI of the Year. The selectors were Vic Marks, Ali Martin, Rob Smyth, Tim de Lisle, Tanya Aldred, Geoff Lemon, Adam Collins, and Andy Bull. Everyone picked their own XI, and when we tallied the votes this is what we came up with.
Dimuth Karunaratne, 8 Tests, 736 runs at 52.57
Opening the innings was a thankless way to make a living in 2018. Midway through December, opening batsmen had a combined average of 28, which was the lowest figure since 1963. That number has had a little bump since, not least because Karunaratne made yet another fifty, his seventh in 11 innings, this one against New Zealand. His one century, a match-winning 158 not out against South Africa in Galle, was made on a pitch on which no one else on either side managed so much as fifty.
Usman Khawaja, 9 Tests, 678 runs at 42.37
Khawaja started the year with his first Ashes century, and he followed it up with a couple of fine fifties against South Africa in the spring. But he really came into his own after Steve Smith and David Warner were banned. All of a sudden he was the senior batsman and he responded by taking on the responsibility of opening in the UAE. He defied his dismal record in those conditions with one of the great rearguard innings, 141 from 302 balls, to save the first Test.
Kane Williamson, 6 Tests, 601 runs at 66.77
The only batsman around who is even close to pushing Virat Kohli for the top spot. Williamson’s runs come so smooth and steady entire sessions can pass without anyone really noticing how many he is racking up. In Auckland, he embarrassed England by making the best part of a 100 on the same day they were bowled out for 58, and at the other end of the year, he played one the defining innings of his career, a century on a spinning pitch in Abu Dhabi to win the series against Pakistan.
Virat Kohli, 12 Tests, 1,240 runs at 56.36
Out on his own, alone, the sport’s best batsman and star attraction. In 2018 he took on the three-peaks challenge of playing away in South Africa, England, and Australia. He started with 153 at Centurion, followed up with 149 at Edgbaston and another 103 at Trent Bridge, and finished with 123 in Perth. In the autumn, he squeezed in 139 against West Indies in Rajkot too. The odd thing was, India won only two of those five Tests. It felt, at times, like a team with so much talent should be achieving more under his leadership.
Joe Root, 13 Tests, 948 runs at 41.21
There were moments last winter when it seemed like Root was losing his way. He was still struggling to convert all those pretty fifties into formidable hundreds, then when he moved up to No 3 his form really started to wobble. So he dropped back down, and, more sure of himself, finally made a century, his first in 13 months, at the Oval. In Sri Lanka he looked like he had figured out how to get the best out of himself and his team, and he played one of his very best innings yet, his 124 in Pallekele.
AB de Villiers, 7 Tests, 638 runs at 53.16
In May, de Villiers quit international cricket but he did enough in those few months to make this team. He said he felt he had “run out of gas”. He must have burned through what little of it he had left in that home series against Australia, when he played one of the great innings of this or any other year, a blazing 126 not out in Port Elizabeth. He did it in conditions so atrociously difficult it was all anyone else could do to just try to stay alive.
Jos Buttler (WK), 10 Tests, 760 runs at 44.7
A year ago, Buttler was not even sure he would ever play Test cricket again. In the spring England created a new position, as a specialist No 7, just so they could fit him in. It was a hunch that paid off when he made a match-winning 80 against Pakistan at Headingley. He followed that with his first Test century against India at Trent Bridge, and back-to-back fifties at the Rose Bowl and the Oval. By the time England were in Sri Lanka, his counterattacking cricket had made him one of their most influential players.
Pat Cummins, 7 Tests, 35 wickets at 22.28
It took Pat Cummins almost six years to get fit for Test cricket. It was worth the wait. This year, he sliced up England at the SCG, shredded South Africa in Cape Town and Johannesburg, where he took nine wickets in the match and also made his first Test fifty. The moment in the first Test against India at Adelaide when he ran out Che Pujara with a fine, flat underhand throw from mid-on – after he’d already slogged through 19 overs – was one of the sharpest bits of Test cricket all year.
Kagiso Rabada, 9 Tests, 46 wickets at 20.39
Rabada was too fast, and too fierce, for most everyone he played against this year. He was at his best in that fiery Test at Port Elizabeth, when he tore through Australia and finished with 11 for 150. It was in that game that he barged into Steve Smith, and while his two-match ban was overturned on appeal, he said himself he wants to learn to curb his temper for his teammate’s sake. So long as he keeps bowling like this the ten other guys in the side surely won’t mind too much.
Yasir Shah, 5 Tests, 37 wickets at 22.97
In October, Australia managed to get through a innings without losing a single wicket to Yasir. It was the first time anyone had managed to shut him out in a home Test, and the last, too. Since then he’s picked 37 in just nine innings, 14 of them for 184 runs in one match against New Zealand. A week later, he took another seven, his 200th among them. It meant he has become the fastest man to 200 wickets in the history of Test cricket, beating a record set by Clarrie Grimmett.
Mohammad Abbas, 7 Tests, 38 wickets at 13.76
Abbas has career figures that come right out of a 19th century Wisden. He has taken 61 wickets at 16 runs each, which means he is between two Victorians, Charles ‘The Terror’ Turner and Bobby Peel, in the all-time top 10. In England, he managed to do such a neat impression of Jimmy Anderson that he took more wickets than him and a lower average, too. In Abu Dhabi, Australia found him unplayable. He took 10 wickets in that match. Dale Steyn was so impressed he tipped him to take over as the world’s No 1 bowler.
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