5 undeserving recipients of 2016 ICC awards

#5 Ravichandran Ashwin

If someone who deserved to win the ICC Test Cricketer of the Year award, then it is none other than the eventual winner R Ashwin. The same cannot be said about Ashwin winning the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for ICC Cricketer of the Year award as there were few other deserving candidates than Ashwin.

In the 29 matches he played across all the three formats, Ashwin picked up 76 wickets, the most by any bowler. Among these 76, he picked 48 wickets in 8 Test matches at an average of 15.39, a number that suggests how effective he was in this period in the longest format of the game.

He managed to pick 25 T20I wickets in 18 matches at an economy of just over run-a-ball, something that is excellent in the format.

But when it comes to his numbers in ODIs, Ashwin has played just 3 matches in this format and picked 3 wickets. The number of ODI matches he played in the given period suggests that he is someone who did not stamp his authority with his performance across all the three formats. At the same time, few names have performed consistently across all the three formats and were ignored by the ICC for Cricketer of the Year award.

Joe Root is someone who has scored 2551 runs in 43 matches at an average of over 50 in that particular period. David Warner with 1913 runs in 35 matches at 46.65 runs per innings and the Player of the tournament in the 2016 World T20 and Virat Kohli are some other names that deserved to win this award.

Kohli scored 1762 runs in 34 matches at an average of over 60 in the given period across all the three formats.