No New Zealanders made the cut in either the test XI of the year or the ODI XI. Instead we won Miss Congeniality with the Spirit of Cricket award. Bah! You'd hardly guess that we won 13 out of our 15 ODIs in the period covered.
The World XI Test Team of the Year (in batting order) is:
1. Matthew Hayden
2. Herschelle Gibbs
3. Ricky Ponting (captain)
4. Rahul Dravid
5. Brian Lara
6. Jacques Kallis
7. Adam Gilchrist
8. Chaminda Vaas
9. Shane Warne
10. Jason Gillespie
11. Stephen Harmison
And the World XI ODI Team of the year is:
1. Adam Gilchrist (wk)
2. Sachin Tendulkar
3. Chris Gayle
4. Ricky Ponting (capt)
5. Brian Lara
6. Virender Sehwag
7. Jacques Kallis
8. Andrew Flintoff
9. Shaun Pollock
10. Chaminda Vaas
11. Jason Gillespie
The fact that the selection committee included an Aussie, a Pom, a Saffie, a West Indian and an Indian, means that the domination of the lists by those countries is not surprising. Along with the lack of Kiwis and Pakistanis, you will also notice that Shane Warne (36 wickets at 22.25) beat out Murali (73 wickets at 18.56) for the spinner's place in the test side. Even the Australian press is finding that one hard to figure out:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/09/08/1094530671468.html?oneclick=true
Perhaps next year New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Pakistan should form the selection committee?
The other awards given last night (players of the year, umpire of the year etc) were selected by means of votes from an Academy of 50 people from all over the place. So perhaps those particular results are a little more fair - if not entirely pleasing. Rahul Dravid (1241 runs at 95.46) deservedly won test player of the year, while Bleeding Andrew Bleeding Flintoff won ODI player.
Despite the fairness in this process, how on earth did Hamish Marshall (740 ODI runs at 46.25) miss out the emerging player award to Irfan Pathan (16 test wickets at 38 and 36 ODI wickets at 23.19)? Perhaps we can blame our low profile for that one.
Wednesday, 8 September 2004
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There's a great article on Cricinfo under the title "The English View" about New Zealand getting the fair play award, pointing out that one of the most vicious moments in world cricket happened when Graeme Smith received an offensive verbal battering from Stephen Fleming on the way out to the toss at one of the tests here. Maybe it should actually have been called the "Richie Benaud doesn't think any of you are actually any good but here's a shiny toy to shut you up" award.
The fair play award should have been awarded to the Pakistani and Indian governments for allowing some great matches to finally take place between those two countries.
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