Year Ender 2022: From captaincy controversy to Suryakumar 360-degree avatar, how was this year for Indian cricket?

The year 2022 is about to end. The last 12 months have been tumultuous for Indian cricket. The Indian men’s team performed brilliantly in the bilateral series but fell short on crucial occasions in the big tournaments. Apart from this, the captaincy controversy also surrounded Team India throughout the year. Rohit Sharma became the regular captain in all three formats, but still the selectors kept on experimenting and made many players captain in different series this year. This also affected the performance of the Indian team.

At the same time, the women’s team won a historic silver medal in the Birmingham Commonwealth Games with a spectacular performance. Apart from this, two veteran women cricketers of India Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami also said goodbye to cricket. We are telling you about what happened in Indian cricket this year.

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Started the year with a Test series defeat against South Africa

The Indian team started the year 2022 by losing the Test series against South Africa. South Africa beat India 2-1 in the three-Test series. However, the match which India won was played in December last year. Due to this defeat, many questions were raised on the Indian team. Along with this, the captaincy ability of KL Rahul also came under the scanner.

Kohli also left the Test captaincy, Rohit became the regular captain of all three formats

With the loss of the Test series against South Africa, Virat Kohli also relinquished the Test captaincy. Although the fans didn’t want it to happen, Kohli resigned from the Test captaincy citing workload. In fact, after a poor performance in the T20 World Cup last year, Kohli was removed from the captaincy of T20 as well as ODI. And such a situation, Kohli also said that split captaincy is not helpful for India. In such a situation, after T20, ODI, Rohit was also made the captain of Test.

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Bihar’s Ishan Kishan shines in IPL mega auction

In the mega auction for IPL 2022 in February, Bihar’s Ishaan Kishan sizzled. He was the most expensive player of the mega auction. He was bought by Mumbai Indians for Rs 15.25 crore. Whereas, Deepak Chahar (CSK) became the second most expensive player with Rs 14 crore. Shreyas Iyer (KKR) became the third costliest player of the mega auction with Rs 12.25 crore. However, the performance of the teams that bought these three in IPL 2022 was poor. Mumbai finished at the bottom 10th position in the points table. CSK finished at the ninth position. Ishaan scored 418 runs in 14 matches.

Gujarat Titans became champion in debut IPL itself, Hardik Pandya’s great comeback

Two teams made their debut in IPL 2022 – Lucknow Supergiants and Gujarat Titans. No one expected these two teams to reach the playoffs, but Lucknow under the leadership of Rahul and Gujarat under the leadership of Hardik Pandya reached the playoffs. Gujarat even became the champion in its very first IPL. Along with this came the rise of Hardik – The Captain. This was Hardik’s first tournament as captain and he made the team champion with his all-round performance. Gujarat defeated Rajasthan Royals in the final.

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Jos Buttler and Yuzvendra Chahal shine in IPL 2022

Jos Buttler of Rajasthan Royals was the highest run scorer in IPL 2022. He scored 863 runs in 17 matches at a strike rate of 149.05 with the help of four centuries. At the same time, Yuzvendra Chahal was the highest wicket-taker. He took 27 wickets in 17 matches. During this, his economy rate was 7.75. Five wickets for 40 runs was his best performance.

Silver medal for Indian women’s team in Birmingham Commonwealth Games

The Indian women’s cricket team had to settle for a silver medal at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games. Australia defeated India by nine runs in the final. In this way, the Australian team won a historic gold medal in women’s cricket, which started for the first time in the Commonwealth Games. Earlier in 1998, the men’s team participated in the Commonwealth Games held in Malaysia. Even then Australia won the gold medal.

Batting first after winning the toss, the Australian women’s team scored 161 runs losing eight wickets in 20 overs. Beth Mooney scored the highest innings of 61 runs. At the same time, captain Meg Lanning played an inning of 36 runs in 26 balls. In response, the Indian team was reduced to 152 runs. Captain Harmanpreet Kaur played an inning of 65 runs. At the same time, Jemima Rodrigues played an inning of 33 runs.

Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami retired

Two of the greatest players of Indian women’s cricket – Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami retired from all forms of cricket. Mithali Raj made many records in her 23 years long international career. He scored 7805 runs in 232 ODIs, while he has 2364 runs in 89 T20s. Mithali scored 699 runs in 12 Tests, including one century and four half-centuries. At the same time, Jhulan played 12 Tests, 204 ODIs and 68 T20 matches in his international career. Jhulan took a total of 355 wickets across all formats.

India got defeated in the rescheduled test against England

In the year 2021, the Indian team went on a tour of England to play a five-Test series. However, the fifth match of the series could not be played due to Corona. At that time India had taken a 2-1 lead over England. In such a situation, there was a lot of controversy about the fifth Test, then it was rescheduled in 2022.