West Indies all-rounder, Andre Russell has been named the leading Twenty20 cricketer in the world in the 2020 edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanac, which was published last week.
The Jamaican succeeds Afghanistan’s master spin-bowler Rashid Khan, who had been honored by Wisden for two years in a row.
Russell, 31, who has a big appetite to lift the ball cleanly over the boundary, has performed a number important knocks at the franchise and international level in 2019 to justify his selection.
In 2019, Russell hammered 52 sixes, which barely second to his Jamaican and West Indies teammate Chris Gayle, who clobbered 59 in 2012. He scored 1,080 runs in total in Twenty20 cricket, at a strike rate of 182, while also taking 46 wickets.
Russell competed across five domestic Twenty20 competitions, from the Kolkata Knight Riders in the India Premier League (IPL) to the Dhaka Dynamites in the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL), making the most of every opportunity to stamp his authority as one of the best players in the world in the format.
Russell credited his dominance to the health regime that he resorted to when he was banned from Jan. 31, 2017 to Jan. 30, 2018 after being found guilty of a doping whereabouts violation in his country.
