A Look at Cricket's Oscars

The sixth ICC awards ceremony was held in Johannesburg, South Africa on Oct. 1.

The award show was a success as usual. I decided to take a look at the evening.

The Host

The Host for the show was Ravi Shastr (suprisingly) and hosting was sorry to say below the standards of the Awards. I wonder why Harsha Bhoghle or Alan Wilnks were not chosen.

The Categories

The Categories were same as last year

Cricketer of the Year

Test Player of the Year

ODI Player of the Year

Emerging Player

Associate and Affiliate Player of the Year

Twenty20 International Performance of the Year

Women's Cricketer of the Year

Umpire of the Year

Spirit of Cricket

But like last time, I failed to understand why Twenty20 International Performance of the Year Award was instead of player, and what is the purpose of the Spirit of Cricket award?

The Nominations

The personnel shortlisted for each award were:

Cricketer of the Year

Mahendra Singh Dhoni (Ind)
Gautam Gambhir (Ind)
Mitchell Johnson (Aus)
Andrew Strauss (Eng)

Test Player of the Year

Gautam Gambhir (Ind)
Mitchell Johnson (Aus)
Thilan Samaraweera (SL)
Andrew Strauss (Eng)

ODI Player of the Year

Shivnarine Chanderpaul (WI)
Mahendra Singh Dhoni (Ind)
Virender Sehwag (Ind)
Yuvraj Singh (Ind)

Emerging Player

Ben Hilfenhaus (Aus)
Graham Onions (Eng)
Jesse Ryder (NZ)
Peter Siddle (Aus)

Associate and Affiliate Player of the Year

Rizwan Cheema (Can)
Ryan ten Doeschate (Ned)
William Porterfield (Ire)
Edgar Schiferli (Ned)

Twenty20 International Performance of the Year

Shahid Afridi (Pak) for scoring 51 off 34 balls and taking 2-16 against South Africa during the ICC WT20 semi-final in Nottingham on June 18
Tillakaratne Dilshan (SL) for scoring 96 not out off 57 balls against the West Indies in the semi-final of the ICC WT20 at The Oval on June 19
Chris Gayle (WI) for hitting 88 off 50 balls against Australia during the ICC WT20 at The Oval on June 6
Umar Gul (Pak) for taking 5-6 against New Zealand during the ICC WT20 at The Oval on June 13

Women's Cricketer of the Year

Charlotte Edwards (Eng)
Shelley Nitschke (Aus)
Claire Taylor (Eng)

Umpire of the Year

Aleem Dar
Tony Hill
Asad Rauf
Simon Taufel

Spirit of Cricket

Australia
England
New Zealand
Sri Lanka

The Winners

The winners were:

Player of the Year: Mitchell Johnson (Australia)

Test Player of the Year: Gautam Gambhir (India)

ODI Player of the Year: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (India)

Twenty20 International Performance of the Year: Tillakaratne Dilshan (Sri Lanka)

Emerging Player of the Year: Peter Siddle (Australia)

Umpire of the Year: Aleem Dar (Pakistan)

Women's Cricketer of the Year: Claire Taylor (England)

Associate Player of the Year: William Porterfield (Ireland)

Spirit of Cricket: New Zealand national cricket team

I think Shaid Afridi should have won the "Twenty20 International Performance of the Year" Award but the the sympathy vote to Tillakaratne Dilshan was such a glaring case of daylight robbery that even a friend of mine who lives in a crime-ridden part of Karachi said he’d never seen anything like it.

The World Teams Of The Year

ICC selected the following teams:

Test Team of the Year is as follows (in batting order):


Gautam Gambhir (Ind)

Andrew Strauss (Eng)

AB de Villiers (SA)

Sachin Tendulkar (Ind)

Thilan Samaraweera (SL)

Michael Clarke (Aus)

MS Dhoni (Ind, WK and captain)

Shakib Al Hasan (Ban)

Mitchell Johnson (Aus)

Stuart Broad (Eng)

Dale Steyn (SA)

12th man: Harbhajan Singh (Ind)

ODI Team of the Year is as follows (in batting order):

Virender Sehwag (Ind)

Chris Gayle (WI)

Kevin Pietersen (Eng)

Tillakaratne Dilshan (SL)

Yuvraj Singh (Ind)

Martin Guptill (NZ)

MS Dhoni (Ind, WK and captain)

Andrew Flintoff (Eng)

Nuwan Kulasekara (SL)

Ajantha Mendis (SL)

Umar Gul (Pak)

12th man: Thilan Thushara (SL)