Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack select a cricketer to honour him by the annual publication. The cricketer is selected basically on the influence in the previous English session. The wisdom player of the year is selected only once in his life time according to the rules. The award comes into existence in 1889 and after 1889 every year cricketers are selected excluding the years of World War I and World War II. In the years of both World Wars domestic cricket is not played in the England but still some players are given the awards to maintain the rules and traditions.
Wisdom nominated Saeed Anwar cricketer of the year in 1997. Thus make him the 11th Pakistani cricketer who receives this honour. Before him the Pakistani cricketers who receives this honour was included Fazal Mahmood (1955), Mushtaq Mohammad (1963), Asif Iqbal & Hanif Mohammad (1968), Zaheer Abbas (1972), Javed Miandad (1982), Imran Khan (1983), Saleem Malik (1988), Waqar Younis (1992), Wasim Akram (1993) and only Pakistani two cricketers receives this honour after Saeed Anwar that include Saqlain Mushtaq (2000) and Mohammad Yousaf (2007). To this day total no. of Pakistani cricketers who were nominated for wisdom cricketer of the year is 13th.
Saeed Anwar was selected for this award largely because of his world record of highest individual score in an innings in One Day Internationals along with his other best innings in Tests. At that period of time he also almost equals the highest no. of ODIs centuries with Sachin Tendulkar.
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