The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Sunday (December 27) announced 'Teams of the Decade' on their social media accounts. The teams caused a lot of debate amongst fans and experts alike, and brought out mixed reactions as one would expect.
MS Dhoni, only captain to win all three major white-ball tournaments (T20 World Cup, ODI World Cup and Champions Trophy), was given the honour of leading the ODI and T20I teams. The wicketkeeper-batsman retired from international cricket recently after representing India for fifteen years at the highest level.
India's current all-format captain and batting superstar, Virat Kohli, was named the captain of the Test team as under his leadership India stayed at the top of the ICC Test rankings for almost three and half years - the longest stretch ever for any team. He also found a place in all three teams for his superlative batting in the decade.
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Other than these two, Rohit Sharma (ODI and T20I), Ravichandran Ashwin (Test), and Jasprit Bumrah (T20I) were the other Indians to find spots in the men's teams.
From the women's side, Mithali Raj (ODI), Harmanpreet Kaur (T20I), Jhulan Goswami (ODI), and Poonam Yadav (T20I) also were picked in the teams announced by ICC.
ALSO READ: ICC announces Women’s ODI and T20I teams of the decade; Mithali and Harmanpreet feature
Suprisingly, no cricketer from Pakistan, male or female, was picked in any of the five teams named by the ICC. The Pakistan Men's side had a lengthy stay at the top of the T20I rankings and one would have expected some representation from the 2009 T20 World Champions in the team for the shortest format, but it wasn't to be.
Former Pakistani cricketers, Rashid Latif and Shoaib Akhtar reacted to the omission from the T20I team on Twitter. Latif, taking a sarcastic dig at IPL, wrote, "TYPO Error {They forget to write IPL-T20s team for the decade}"
Shoaib Akhtar quoted Latif's tweet, and wrote, "As expected."