Related Links : Shivnarine Chanderpaul
Shivnarine Chanderpaul has been named as the ICC Cricketer of the Year at the fifth edition of the annual ICC Awards which was held in Dubai today. The ICC Cricketer of the Year was the biggest of all the eight individual awards that were announced. The ICC Cricketer of the Year is given the Sir Garifield Sobers Trophy and Chanderpaul had got the award ahead of three other nominees in Mahela Jayawardene, Graeme Smith and Dale Steyn.
Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s record to get this top honour was that of scoring 819 Test runs at an average of 91.00 with three hundreds and six fifties. In the 13 ODIs that he had played during the voting period, the southpaw had done equally well with 598 runs at a staggering average of 74.75. He had scored a century and six fifties out of those 598 ODI runs. The 34-year-old Chanderpaul also found a place in the ICC World Test Team of the Year, as chosen by a panel of some of the greats of the game. The past winners of the ICC Cricketer of the Year were Rahul Dravid (2004), Andrew Flintoff and Jacques Kallis (joint winners in 2005) and Ricky Ponting, who won the award twice in 2006 and 2007.
On getting the award, Chanderpaul said: “I am honoured to be given this prestigious award tonight and I am very thankful to God for blessing me with the talent that I have. I would like to thank my family – in particular my wife Amy – for their constant support over the years.
Chanderpaul also said “A special thank you goes out to my manager, my agent and all my supporters in the Caribbean and throughout the world. It’s also important that I thank my team-mates without whom this wouldn’t have been possible.
“My congratulations go out to all the other winners tonight – these awards are great for the players and it is an honour even to be nominated. I am thrilled to have won.”