It’s time for the Ballon d’Or because it’s always time for the Ballon d’Or. Once the golden ball is presented at the London Palladium this month to Harry Kane/Lamine Yamal/Lionel Messi (let us know in the comments!), the debate will quickly switch to next year’s contenders, continuing football’s unhealthy relationship with an individual trophy. Perversely, quite the team move.
Cricket celebrates the individual with greater range. The sport lauds hundreds, five-wicket hauls and averages, making for games within games, prompting forensic analysis of when Joe Root will overtake Sachin Tendulkar as the leading run-scorer in Test history. The International Cricket Council has its rankings for the best batters, bowlers and all-rounders in the world, across formats for men and women.
My Instagram feed has recently been hijacked by: 1) AI bunnies breakdancing; 2) adverts for hair loss pills; and 3) Stuart Broad and Jos Buttler ranking the best Test batters of the century. But there’s also something missing here, something by which the sport is less consumed – the question football asks itself constantly. Who is the best player in the world?
Yes, there’ll be talk of the best batter, bowler or all-rounder, but what about ignoring the subcategories? For better or worse, there doesn’t seem to be a desperate push to celebrate the ultimate crown. The ICC does have its own annual awards, launched in 2004, with the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy given to the men’s cricketer of the year and the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy for the women’s equivalent.
But the last declared winners were Jasprit Bumrah and Melie Kerr for their international performances in 2024. Even the most ardent followers of the game will have failed to notice the absence of any awards for 2025. An ICC spokesperson said: “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.
An acknowledgment, then, that the old model didn’t make much of a splash. Then there are the annual titles bestowed by the Wisden almanack, including the five Cricketers of the Year, an honour with its own terms and conditions. Chosen by the editor, the picks are based on performances in the previous English summer and it can be won only once.
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