Go fetch a cup of tea and your best arguments, it’s time for the Guardian’s 10th annual men’s Test XI of the Year. This year’s selection panel comprised Vic Marks, Ali Martin, Emma John, Rob Smyth, Jonathan Liew, Adam Collins, Geoff Lemon, Daniel Gallan, Tim de Lisle, Taha Hashim, Tanya Aldred, Jim Wallace, and myself, Andy Bull. It’s been an intriguing 12 months, in which every team was able to beat someone but no team was able to beat everyone, and at the end of it, everyone picked their own XI and, when we added up the votes, this is how it all came out (and yes, we were surprised so many Englishmen ended up in it, too) …

1 Yashasvi Jaiswal

14 matches, 1,312 runs at 52. Votes: 13 out of 13

Over the course of England’s tour of India, Jaiswal established himself as one of the brightest batters of the next generation of Test cricketers, a point he proved when he ended the year by taking 161 off Australia in Perth. It wasn’t just the number of runs he scored, although they came by the hundred-weight, with back-to-back double centuries in Vizag and Rajkot, it was the irresistible ferocity of his batting. Jaiswal hit more sixes in the past 12 months of Test cricket than Virat Kohli has in 12 years of it. He was the only unanimous pick in this team.

2 Ben Duckett

16 matches, 1,065 at 35. Votes: 10

It was a rough 12 months for opening batters right around the world, and Duckett, as the former Wisden editor Tim de Lisle says, is a faute de mieux selection. Aside from Jaiswal, he was the only opener to make 1,000 runs in the year, or even get close to it. He scored two dashing centuries in games England lost, against India in Rajkot and Pakistan in Multan, and established himself as a senior member of the team, but his slightly flibbertigibbet habit of getting out without going on meant he finished the year with a middling average.

3 Joe Root

17 matches, 1,556 at 56 / 11 wickets at 51. Votes: 12

There’s an argument that Root is the best batter in the game right now, and an argument, too, that given what he’s achieved in his field, he may even be the most accomplished active sportsperson in the UK. Just don’t expect to hear him make it himself. Chastised for his impish dismissal trying to reverse‑scoop Jasprit Bumrah in India, he responded with a bloody-minded 122 off 274 balls in the next Test against them. It was the first of six centuries he scored against five different teams in four countries. In the space of six weeks of high summer, he scored twin tons against Sri Lanka at Lord’s and a career-best 262 against Pakistan.

4 Harry Brook

12 matches, 1,100 runs at 55. Votes: 11

You only ever needed to see Brook hit one inside-out cover drive to understand exactly how talented a batsman he is, but it’s been a joy to watch him make good on his potential this year, when his form has carried him right to the top of the International Cricket Council’s Test batting rankings. He skipped the tour of India for personal reasons, but spent the time getting himself in shape for the season ahead, and was rewarded for it with four hundreds, including the first triple century by an Englishman in more than 30 years. Root reckons he is “by far and away the best player in the world at the minute”. Next year’s series against India and Australia will show whether he is right about that.

5 Kamindu Mendis

9 matches, 881 runs at 66 / 3 wickets at 30. Votes: 8

Mendis spent most of his year propping up Sri Lanka from way down the order. He began with back-to-back scores of 102 and 92 not out against Bangladesh, and was better again on tour in England, where he made 113, 74 and 64 in successive Tests. He dominated a home series against New Zealand, when he made twin centuries, the second of them an unbeaten 182, which made him the series’ leading scorer by a country mile. He found it harder going on tour in South Africa, but still, by the end of the year his remarkable ability to bowl both right- and left-arm spin was just a footnote to the brilliance of his technically adept batting.

6 Travis Head

8 matches, 607 runs at 47 / 3 wickets at 26. Votes: 6

Head’s freewheeling batting was a bust more often than not – he was dismissed under 30 in eight of the 12 innings he played this year, and endured a run of 0, 0 and 1 across series against West Indies and New Zealand in the spring. But when it came off he broke some of the best Test bowling units. He took 119 off the sharp West Indian attack in January, and then made 89, 140, and 152 against India in December, the two centuries turning the course of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy after Australia had been bowled out for 104 in their first innings of the series. About the only man who’s figured out a way to play Jasprit Bumrah.

7 Kyle Verreynne

7 matches 380 runs at 42, 20 catches, three stumpings. Votes: 4

So far as rookie mistakes go, taking the mickey out of the South African national team is right up there alongside starting a land war in Asia. The Proteas were derided for sending a third team to New Zealand so that their stars could stay at home and play Twenty20, and they responded, characteristically, with an unbeaten run of matches against West Indies, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka that put them top of the World Test Championship. Verreynne has been one of the driving forces behind their resurgence. He played a match-winning innings of 114 against Bangladesh in Mirpur, the only century of a Test, and the best of his career.

8 Ravindra Jadeja

11 matches, 508 runs at 32 / 44 wickets at 24. Votes: 6

At 36 Jadejas is a little older, a little greyer, and his bowling has lost just a little of its edge, but he was still irrepressible. When he wasn’t scoring runs, he was taking wickets; when he wasn’t taking wickets, he was scoring runs, and when he wasn’t doing either it was only because he was doing both. He had a star turn in India’s 434-run humiliation of England in Rajkot, when he scored a six-hour century and took seven-wickets, then he took 10 for 120, the second-best match figures of his career, against New Zealand at Mumbai. He finished the year with a crucial 77 to save the follow-on in a draw against Australia.

9 Gus Atkinson

11 matches, 52 wickets at 22 / 352 runs at 23. Votes: 8

A Boy’s Own summer. Atkinson has achieved so much so quickly that it’s easy to forget he couldn’t even get into the England team last winter, when he was the spare wheel in the seam attack. He made his debut in July, but he has already got 50 Test wickets, a 12-wicket haul against West Indies, a century against Sri Lanka and a hat-trick against New Zealand, too, after all of which there wasn’t a whole lot left for him to achieve in the sport. The greatest testament to him is that no one really felt the need to mention that England were missing Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad.

10 Matt Henry

9 matches, 48 wickets at 19. Votes: 7

After eight years as a part of New Zealand’s supporting cast, Henry has finally earned a starring part as the leader of their Test attack. At 33, and with a decade spent honing his game in domestic leagues behind him, he was ready for it. He took 17 wickets at 15 runs each in two Tests against Australia in the spring, which won him player of the series in spite of New Zealand’s defeat, and he followed that with 13 wickets at only 12 runs each when they whitewashed India, including five for 15 in the first Test at Bengaluru. There haven’t been many men who have outbowled India’s own quicks in their home conditions, but Henry did.

11 Jasprit Bumrah

12 matches, 62 wickets at 14. Votes: 12

The leading cricketer in the world, Bumrah bookended his year with six for 61 against South Africa in Cape Town and six for 76 against Australia in Brisbane. In between, he did it to England too, when he took six for 45 in Vizag. The batsmen kept trying to persuade themselves, and everyone else, that despite his unorthodox action, Bumrah was just another fast bowler, vulnerable as any other, but so far no one has really done much to prove it’s actually true. He was the biggest difference between the teams in India’s home series over England, and, if he carries on in this sort of form, will be again in their away series against Australia.

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