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Pakistan’s wicket-keeper batter, Mohammad Rizwan has been named as the leading T20 cricketer of the year by Wisden. Rizwan’s record-breaking performances in the shortest format of the game also saw him win the ICC T20I cricketer of the year award.

Rizwan also became the first-ever player to score 1,000 T20 international runs in a calendar year. At an average of 73.66 in international cricket, he made 1,326 runs.

"Twenty20 batting is supposed to be a volatile, high-variance occupation: boom-boom or bust. Occasionally, a player produces a purple patch to rise above the hurly-burly. But no one has had a year of such sustained run-scoring as Pakistan's Mohammad Rizwan," said Alen Gardner.

"Never mind seeing it well: he was batting as if blessed with foresight. And in a sense he was. After starring in Pakistan's ten-wicket demolition of India at the T20 World Cup, his clarity of purpose was summed up by a viral video from the ICC that spliced his pre-game routine of visualization alongside the boundaries he struck during his 55-ball 79," he added.

Gardner also emphasised how brilliant Rizwan's numbers were and how he left behind the greats of T20 cricket.

"The bare numbers had a formidable heft. Rizwan peeled off 1,326 T20I runs at 73 – breaking the calendar record, set by Ireland's Paul Stirling in 2019, by almost 600. In all T20 cricket, he made 2,036 at 56. No one – not Chris Gayle, not Virat Kohli, not Rizwan's opening partner, Babar Azam, who last year scored 1,779 himself – had ever got near 2,000."

The 29-year-old become the first-ever cricketer in the history of T20 cricket to amass over 2,000 runs in a calendar year. In 45 innings, he amassed 2,036 runs at an average of 56.55.