Best International players by age in 2025
An intro to a series of posts examining the elite international cricketers by age group in 2025.
I’ll keep this brief. Today, I’m super excited to share details of a series of posts I have planned to explore who the best international players are by age in 2025. The series will explore the allocation of talent across the different age brackets, how some players develop quicker than others, how different countries manage their players to avoid talent vacuums, and the age-old conundrum of how long successful players should play, weighing immediate success against long-term sustainability.
How this will work.
The series of posts will examine players aged 18 to 43, identifying the standout (best) performer at each age across all international formats and T20 leagues. "Best" is a delicately contentious term in cricket—so I'll aim to balance recent form, career achievements, impact on winning records, and technical excellence when making judgements. While Test cricket is the format that offers the most compelling statistical facts and challenges cricketers more than the other formats, limited-overs brilliance won't be overlooked, especially in this T20 World Cup year and the recent Champions Trophy.
As it stands, we have one independent selector locked in: New Zealand's Danny Morrison, who is currently traversing India while commentating on this year's IPL tournament. Danny and I were teammates way back in 1992 when he joined Lancashire CCC, covering for Wasim Akram, who was touring with Pakistan. We have remained friends since, and I am thrilled to have Danny along to cast his beady eye over the proceedings. I also want to have guest commentary to supplement our viewpoints—stay tuned for that. You can also play a part in it, and we encourage you to be active in the comments section. Additionally, there may be an opportunity to use Substack's chat feature.
Cricket’s current landscape.
As we navigate through 2025, international cricket finds itself at a fascinating juncture. India reinforces its dominance in white-ball cricket, while England's ultra-aggressive mandate has revolutionised Test cricket. Australia remains formidable across all formats, while Pakistan's new generation has finally stabilised its mercurial reputation. Meanwhile, teams like Afghanistan and Ireland continue to narrow the gap with established powers.
South Africa's resurgence has been one of the year's stories, culminating in their final qualification for the World Test Championship (WTC). New Zealand continues to punch above their weight, reinforcing a reputation as one of the most consistent teams in world cricket.
The emergence of global T20 leagues has created cricket's first genuine free agency, changing how we evaluate player development and career trajectories and making age analysis particularly relevant.
The data.
Whichever way you pronounce it, the data is gold.
The series will leverage a comprehensive database of cricket statistics across the international formats and T20 leagues—but numbers don't tell the whole story. We'll complement the statistical analysis with our own context (hopefully, there will be a panel), but then your numbers never lie.
Thanks to colleague Prateek Patil, who helped connect me with Rajesh and Vijay at Kadamba Technologies and kindly provided the stats. The numbers are current through April 1, 2025. We plan to run a master spreadsheet that will be available to you and be updated as we pass through the brackets. You can find the Google sheet here.
Join the conversation
As this series unfolds, we invite you to debate, disagree, agree, and suggest alternatives in the comments. Cricket thrives on healthy disagreement and differing points of view, and I envision many "How could you possibly choose X over Y?" discussions. The only caveat is that you need a speaking.cricket subscription to comment. You can get that here. No posts will be paywalled.
When will the first edition drop?
It is Masters weekend, and I am travelling back to Australia on Sunday—madness, missing the golf! I arrive Wednesday and will need a few days to get used to the water circling in a different direction. So, I hope to post next weekend.
Resources:
Speaking.Cricket subscription
Google sheet
How to use Chat
Ps. A left hander to win for me. Bobby Mac.