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 terms 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 |
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 |
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.
Top Three Run-Scorers in ODIs in 2021
- Paul Stirling (IRE) – 705 runs
- Jonathan Malan (SA) – 509 runs
- Tamim Iqbal (BAN) – 464 runs
Click here to find the top 10 ODI run-scorers in this year.
Top Three Wicket-Takers in ODIs in 2021
- Dushmantha Chameera (SL) – 20 wickets
- Simi Singh (IRE) – 19 wickets
- Sandeep Lamichhane (NEP) – 18 wickets
Click here to find the top 10 ODI wicket-takers in this year.
T20 Internationals Records – 2021
The World Cup year witnessed 71 International teams trying their hands on the game’s shortest format.
333 T20 International games were played in 2021, which is the highest in any calendar year.
Pakistan had a successful year in the shortest format. They were the first semi-finalist in WT20 and, on the whole, won 20 games out of 29 played this year.
The current world champions of the format, Australia, won 10 out of their 22 games, whereas the Indian unit has an excellent win percentage of 62.5 in the 16 matches they played this year.
Below is the summary of the top 15 ranked teams in the format in 2021.
TEAMS | MATCHES | WON | LOST | TIED | NR | WIN% |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Afghanistan | 8 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 62.5 |
Australia | 22 | 10 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 45.45 |
Bangladesh | 27 | 11 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 40.74 |
India | 16 | 10 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 62.5 |
Ireland | 16 | 6 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 37.5 |
Nepal | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 80 |
Netherlands | 8 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 31.25 |
New Zealand | 23 | 13 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 56.52 |
Pakistan | 29 | 20 | 6 | 0 | 3 | 76.92 |
Scotland | 13 | 5 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 38.46 |
South Africa | 23 | 15 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 65.21 |
Sri Lanka | 20 | 8 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 40 |
United Arab Emirates | 4 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 50 |
West Indies | 25 | 9 | 13 | 0 | 3 | 40.9 |
Zimbabwe | 17 | 6 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 35.29 |
It would be right to say two Pakistani batsmen made the T20 records chart their own with the bat this year. In the shortest format, Mohammad Rizwan and Babar Azam ended as the two leading run-scorers of the year. Rizwan became the first batsman to score more than 1000 T20I runs in a calendar year. He also became the first player to hit 10 or more 50+ T20I scores within a year.

With the ball, the Sri Lankan all-rounder Wanindu Hasaranga de Silva and the South African spinner Tabraiz Shamsi share the first spot in the wicket-takers list in the format. This year, both have picked 36 wickets, with the Sri Lankan attaining the mark with a better bowling average, strike rate, and economy rate.
Top Three Run-Scorers in T20Is in 2021
- Mohammad Rizwan (PAK) – 1326 runs
- Babar Azam (PAK) – 939 runs
- Martin Guptill (NZ) – 678 runs
Click here to find the top 10 T20I run-scorers in this year.
Top Three Wicket-Takers in T20Is in 2021
- Wanindu Hasaranga (SL) – 36 wickets
- Tabraiz Shamsi (SA) – 36 wickets
- Dinesh Nakrani (UGA) – 35 wickets
Click here to find the top 10 T20I wicket-takers in this year.
What to expect in 2022?
There will be another T20I world cup in the new year, this time in Australia. So one can hope to see a rise in the number of T20 matches.
And, there will be more Tests, thanks to the World Test Championship. The year starts with Bangladesh contesting New Zealand in whites, followed by ongoing South Africa vs India and the Ashes series.
The format that will still be in trouble is ODIs, as the boards would like to have more shortest format games as the limited-overs option. However, the World Cup next year might see teams wanting to set their playing XIs right and the bench strength sufficient.