Wisden announces cricketers of the year for 2008

The latest edition of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack has the list of the cricketers of 2008. Remember that the names are primarily chosen based on the English cricket season, and no one can be a "Cricketer of the year" more than once.

This time around, for the first time, a woman has been selected in the list - England batsman Claire Taylor. The others are James Anderson, Dale Benkenstein, Mark Boucher and Neil McKenzie.

This would be such a huge boost for women's cricket in general and in particular in England, considering they won the Women's World Cup recently.

The identity of the "Leading Cricketer in the World" award is not yet known. If the performances from 1 Jan 2008 to 31 Dec 2008 were taken into account, the top 2 in each category are:

	Tests	ODIs	T20
Batting	Graeme Smith and Virender Sehwag	Gautam Gambhir and Mahendra Singh Dhoni	Hamilton Masakadza and Salman Butt
Bowling	Dale Steyn, Harbhajan Singh and Mitchell Johnson	Ajantha Mendis and Muttiah Muralitharan	Harvir Baidwan and Ajantha Mendis

Given the sensation he created last year with his bowling style and the effectiveness of his style, and considering he picked up the ICC award for Best Debutant, I wouldn't be surprised if Ajantha Mendis was announced as the "Leading Cricketer in the World".

Labels: almanack, awards, prediction, wisden, women

Thus spake Jagadish @ 1:27 pm | Sledge/Read 3 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

Wrong award choice - part 3

It is the time for yet another post on a wrong choice of awards by administrators. In 2005, Jacques Kallis was overlooked for the man of the match award for his brilliantly relevant batting display in game five of the one-day series in India. In 2006, Kevin Pietersen's inability to play his role as his side's best one-day batsman was not rewarded either with a man of the series award.

Yesterday, as West Indies chased 339 against India at Nagpur, Marlon Samuels played the kind of innings Jacques Kallis would have been proud of. He came in with the score reading 102/1 in the 17th over, after Gayle and Chanderpaul had waded into some extremely ridiculous bowling on a superb batting track. West Indies had to get 7 an over over nearly 34 overs, certainly a tough ask. Samuels made it even tougher for his side. He did have his moments, especially with a couple of blows against Harbhajan, but West Indies were really handicapped by the fact that Samuels monopolized the strike during his partnership with Chanderpaul. When Samuels came in (102 in 16.2 overs), Chanderpaul had scored 40 in 38 balls. When Samuels left (175 in 33 overs), Chanderpaul had scored a further 27 runs in 44 balls while Samuels made 40 in 60 balls. They scored at 4.4 runs an over in those 16-odd overs. Obviously credit must be given to the bowlers (Agarkar and Harbhajan especially) when they bowled some tight overs early on in the partnership.

India maybe made a mistake by dismissing Samuels, because it allowed Lara to come in and express himself and gave West Indies a real chance of a win, which would have been a record in most other circumstances, except for the fact that they'd still have fallen short of the record by nearly 100 runs!

Ok, now lets set the snide remarks aside. But why was Chanderpaul given the man of the match award? Yes, a score of nearly 150 with his side chasing a huge total was a brilliant effort. But this was, all said and done, a great wicket for batting. In contrast, the bowlers might as well not even have turned up. Well, except for Zaheer Khan. He bowled brilliantly, except for a couple of overs early on. He finished with 2/48 in 10 overs, streets ahead of every other bowler in terms of economy rate. When West Indies needed 8.5 an over, he bowled 3 overs for 13 runs (and dismissed Samuels). The moment he finished his spell, the impact of his parsimony was felt as Chanderpaul and Lara cut loose against Sreesanth, Tendulkar and Harbhajan. When Zaheer came back for his final spell, West Indies needed 11.5 an over in 7 overs. He conceded 15 in 2 overs, and dismissed Bravo.

Why should a batsman be named man of the match when both sides scored over 325 runs? Why wasn't a bowler recognized?

Meanwhile, in other news, there's an absorbing finish in store at Port Elizabeth as Pakistan chase 191 for victory against South Africa. I'm tempted to put money on South Africa though.

Update: I really need answers in the form of comments here. What was Sourav Ganguly on when he told BBC Sport that England would fare well at the 2007 World Cup? Was he clearly inebriated by his brilliant 98 in his first one-day international for India since a triangular series final in Zimbabwe, after which Chappell's leaked email took the spotlight and Dravid was named skipper?

Labels: awards, ganguly, kallis, lara, pietersen, samuels, zaheer khan

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:54 am | Sledge/Read 9 sledge(s)
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]