World cricket to honour best of the best

INDIA’S national cricket team skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni is the only Indian in the running for the game’s highest honour — the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for International Cricket Council (ICC) Cricketer of the Year.

Dhoni, along with Hashim Amla (South Africa), James Anderson (England), Michael Clarke (Australia), Alastair Cook (England) and Kumar Sangakkara (Sri Lanka), was this week named in the short list for nominees for the prestigious award. This and other awards will be announced on Saturday.

Dhoni also features among the nominees for the ODI Player of the Year along with compatriots Shikhar Dhawan and Ravindra Jadeja.

India off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin and batsman Cheteshwar Pujara are in running for the ICC test Player of the Year award.

Anderson, Amla and Clarke are the three cricketers who have been short-listed for both the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for the ICC Cricketer of the Year and the ICC Test Cricketer of the Year.

The LG ICC awards lists announced by ICC chief executive David Richardson sees 12 countries represented across the categories for the top individual prizes in international cricket.

The Twenty20 International (T20I) Performance of the Year sees Sri Lanka’s Ajantha Mendis being shortlisted alongside Pakistan’s Umar Gul and New Zealanders Martin Guptill and Brendon McCullum.

In the short list for the ICC Women’s ODI Cricketer of the Year, last year’s winner Stafanie Taylor is joined by New Zealand captain Suzie Bates, Australia’s Meg Lanning, South Africa’s Dane van Niekerk and the England pair of Charlotte Edwards and Anya Shrubsole.

Taylor, Bates and Lanning also feature in the short list for the ICC Women's T20I Cricketer of the Year, along with England’s Sarah Taylor

Hashim Amla on short list of nominees for the prestigious awards

and the West Indies’ duo of Shanel Daley and Deandra Dottin.

The lists were compiled by a fiveperson ICC selection panel before a 32-member voting academy trimmed the nominees.

The ICC selection panel was chaired by Anil Kumble, a former India captain and current chairman of the ICC cricket committee. The panel also includes former internationals Alec Stewart of England, Catherine Campbell of New Zealand, Waqar Younis of Pakistan and Graeme Pollock of South Africa.

The David Shepherd Trophy for the ICC Umpire of the Year award was voted on by the 10 current test captains and the Elite Panel of ICC Match Referees, and is partly based on the umpires’ performance statistics. —