Dhoni clinches LG ICC ODI Player of the Year Award

Mahendra Singh Dhoni has won the ODI Player of the year award at the LG ICC awards ceremony held in Dubai on 10 Sep 2008. This year’s LG ICC Awards included eight individual prizes, including a new one for the Twenty20 International Performance of the Year that went to Yuvraj Singh for his amazing six sixes off Stuart Broad.

Nominees for the award
India's one-day and Twenty20 International captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has been nominated for the award along with Sachin Tendulkar, Mohammad Yousuf and Nathan Bracken. The award was given based on the players performance during the period between August 9, 2007 and August 12, 2008. Let us take a look at the comparison of the four players’ performance during the above period.

Analysis of the performances
The table below lists the performance of the four players during the mentioned period. The players include one bowler, two specialist batsmen and one wicket-keeper batsman.


It is very clear that everyone has performed well and it is difficult to prefer one above the other. During the period under consideration, Dhoni won three man of the match awards, Sachin too had three, Yousuf had two and Bracken was content with one. Yousuf had won the player of the series award for the South Africa series at home while Bracken clinched the series award for his performance during CB series in Australia.

Why the award went to Dhoni?
I believe Dhoni inched ahead of the others due to his wicket-keeping skills and his able captaincy. During this period, he has led the Indian team in 31 matches. The result is in favour of Dhoni with 16 wins, 12 losses and 3 matches with no result. Dhoni’s achievements, as captain, include a series victory over Pakistan at home, CB series triumph in Australia, finals appearance in Kitply cup and Asia cup. His batting average also shoots up to 59.10 while playing as a captain.

Milestone
Dhoni becomes the first Indian to win the ODI player of the year award. The last four awards went to England twice (Flintoff and Pietersen) and Australia twice (Hayden and Michael Hussey).

Other Awards

• Cricketer of the year: Shivnarine Chanderpaul (West Indies)


• Test Player of the year: Dale Steyn (South Africa)


• Twenty20 International Performance: Yuvraj Singh (India)


• Emerging Player of the year: Ajantha Mendis (Sri Lanka)


• Captain of the year: Ricky Ponting (Australia)


• Umpire of the year: Simon Taufel (Australia)


• Associate Player of the year: Ryan ten Doeschate (Netherlands)


• Women’s Cricketer of the year: Charlotte Edwards (England)


• Spirit of Cricket award: Sri Lanka team