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September
10, 2008
 India's
One Day Captain and wicket keeper Mahendra Singh Dhoni has
been awarded as the ICC ODI Player of the Year 2008 in Dubai.
Dhoni had recently been honoured with the Rajiv Gandhi Khel
Ratna award, which is the highest honour for a sportsman in
India. MS Dhoni had got the ODI Player of the Year ahead of
the other three nominees who were Sachin Tendulkar, Nathan
Bracken and Mohammad Yousuf to take the prestigious award. One
of Dhoni's plus points was the fact that he was also doing the
wicket keeping and the captaincy roles along with his reliable
batting shows.
During the voting period, Dhoni played 39 ODIs
and scored 1,298 runs at a terrific average of 49.92. His
strike rate was 82.46 which was no way near his brutal
100+ SR during his initial phase of his career. However, Dhoni
has managed to play more match winning innings after accepting
a great deal of responsibility on his shoulders and also
adapting to the needs of the situation in the middle. Out of
those 1298 runs, Dhoni had got a century and nine half
centuries. Besides that India had won the CB Series, ODI
Series against Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
Dhoni expressed his happiness on being named
as the ODI Player of the year by saying: “I would like to
thank the Voting Academy for considering me to be deserving of
this award. I am really happy to get this – it’s a great
privilege.
“Also, it feels great to know that I am the first Indian
player to get this particular award and it’s very special
because now I am in the company of a lot of other good
cricketers. Some fantastic players have won this award in the
past and to be mentioned in their company is truly a humbling
experience for me.
“I would like to thank the ICC, my home cricket board, my
family, my team-mates and friends.”
The past winners of the ODI Player of the
Year before MS Dhoni were Andrew Flintoff (2004), Kevin
Pietersen (2005), Michael Hussey (2006) and Matthew Hayden
(2007).
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