ICC scraps 2025 awards in rethink as cricket ponders its own Ballon d'Or

Football's golden obsession, cricket's quiet individualism

It's Ballon d'Or season again. The golden ball will be presented at the London Palladium this month, with Harry Kane, Lamine Yamal or Lionel Messi among the names in the frame, and the football world will once more immerse itself in its annual fixation with a single individual trophy. The ceremony has become so intense that Real Madrid boycotted the 2024 event after Vinícius Júnior had to settle for second place — a “perversely, quite the team move,” as Guardian writer Taha Hashim puts it.

Cricket, by contrast, has never felt the same urge to crown one best player on the planet. The sport celebrates the individual with far greater range — hundreds, five-wicket hauls, averages, and the endless forensic analysis of when Joe Root might overtake Sachin Tendulkar as the leading run-scorer in Test history. The ICC publishes rankings for the best batters, bowlers and all-rounders across formats for men and women, and broadcasters such as Stuart Broad and Jos Buttler have been ranking the best Test batters of the century. Yet there is no desperate push for an ultimate crown.

ICC holds back 2025 awards to 'rethink' the platform

The International Cricket Council runs its own annual awards, launched in 2004, with the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for the men's cricketer of the year and the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy for the women's equivalent. The last declared winners were Jasprit Bumrah and Melie Kerr, for their international performances in 2024. But even the most ardent followers will have failed to notice the absence of any awards for 2025.

An ICC spokesperson confirmed the governing body deliberately held back last year's edition: “The ICC has presented its annual awards digitally for a number of years, but we deliberately held back the 2025 edition to rethink what that platform can, and should, look like. As a result of that rethink, we are now in the process of developing a new approach to the ICC awards, which will return in 2027 and treat 2025-26 as a single season, as we look to create a broader, more meaningful way for cricket to celebrate its leading players, teams and achievements.”

The spokesperson added that as the ICC tries to “refine” its plan, “there is a real opportunity for the awards to become a significant global occasion for cricket that generates genuine excitement on the calendar” — an acknowledgement, in effect, that the old model “didn't make much of a splash.”

Wisden's global honour — but no glitz

Then there are the Wisden almanack's annual titles. The five Cricketers of the Year, an honour with its own terms and conditions, has been around since 1889, chosen by the editor based on performances in the previous English summer and winnable only once. For something more global, resembling the Ballon d'Or, there is the Leading Cricketer in the World — the men's version introduced in the 2004 almanack, the women's 11 years later. Mitchell Starc, lethal in the Ashes, and Deepti Sharma, central to India's World Cup win, are the current holders. The almanack even declares retrospective winners for the 20th century: Don Bradman, with a Messi-like run, was victorious on 10 occasions from 1930 to 1948.

But Lawrence Booth, the almanack's editor, says being one of the five remains “the plum prize.” “That's the prize that most people talk about,” Booth says. “That has a resonance in a way that the Leading Cricketer doesn't quite yet. The Leading Cricketer in the World is our chance to point out that we're not just Anglocentric and that we take into account all kinds of cricket throughout the year and all nationalities. It's similar to the ICC awards — you could predict in a way who's going to win those awards because it's generally the leading run-scorer or wicket-taker, whereas the five is a bit more quirky. The five is the one that most people ask about.”

Do we need a cricket coronation?

There is, of course, no glitzy trophy or crowning image on stage for the leading cricketers, nothing backed by the institutional might of Uefa as the Ballon d'Or is. But is that really a problem? While the ICC ponders how to jazz up its awards, there are bigger priorities for the governing body. A prestigious award for the best of the best is worth having, and an updated version with real heft could make for good storytelling during a bland white-ball series.

Surveying the current international landscape, plausible contenders for 2026's major gongs include Harry Brook, Beth Mooney, Shai Hope and Shree Charani. But as Hashim concludes, while Rio Ferdinand screamed “Ballon d'Or, Ballon d'Or, Ballon d'Or!” as Vinícius sealed Real Madrid's Champions League triumph, we don't need Michael Atherton bellowing “Wisden, Wisden, Wisden!” as Brook reaches three figures in a World Cup final. Football can keep that to itself.