ICC Players Awards Decided – Evenly Distributed

The results of the fifth edition of the ICC Awards are out and it seems no one country has bagged too many to make it an uneven contest. It was a case of predictable winners the whole way through.

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The nominees may say much in the clichéd fashion, “It was an honour just to be nominated.” But it could not have been truer. The names that were nominated to win the various prestigious awards of the night numbers few but carried the weight well. In that light, the few that did lost out on the awards need not be disappointed even though their performances certainly made for a stiff race.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul finally made it to the ICC Cricketer of the Year award by winning it. His phenomenal average of over ninety in the calendar year as devised by the ICC has been beyond reach for most of the other candidates and it seemed ironical that his prolific reign has come from a team that has been struggling to reestablish itself as a strong cricket body internationally. It makes his efforts even more commendable in that light to be able to find greater motivation to beat the odds.

Graeme Smith may have been disappointed but he need not be. While his heartwarming knock in the third Test against England gave South Africa their first series victory in England since 1965, Dale Steyn has been the outstanding performer of the year to covet the ICC Test Cricketer of the Year award. Another individual whose merits can be measured from the fact of Shaun Pollock’s retirement and the almost indifferent form of Makhaya Ntini in recent months, Steyn thoroughly deserved the award for being an outstanding bowler who managed to pip the batsmen to the award.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni was clearly the ICC ODI Player of the Year while perhaps the only shining, rather silver lining to Yuvraj Singh’s year would be the six sixes and the natural selection for the Twenty20 International Performance of the Year award.

While India was hoping to make a hat-trick of awards with Ishant Sharma, there was little doubt from a cricketing point of view that Ajantha Mendis had to be the outstanding performer to get the ICC Emerging Player of the Year award.

While Simon Taufel continues in the good books of being picked as the best umpire, Sri Lanka are making it a habit as well winning the Spirit of Cricket award with Mahela Jayawardene’s line of “you don’t have to be ugly to be aggressive” becoming more like a motto.

For those that did not win, little can come by way of consolation other than the fact that they were amongst the few picked for such a prestigious honour. Yes, it is an honour just to be nominated. But the honour of someone else winning the trophy may have just spoilt it all.