Espncricinfo Awards 2011 Unveil Best Performances Nominees

ESPNcricinfo is unveiling the nominees for this year’s ESPNcricinfo Awards, which celebrates the best individual performances in 2011 by batsmen and bowlers in Tests and one-day internationals.

Kevin Pietersen one of the many nominees. Photo by Shiek Mohamed

All the major cricket nations are well represented in the nominations with cricketers including Kevin Pietersen, MS Dhoni and Ricky Ponting all nominated for at least one award.

England, otherwise, dominate the nominations, with six players spread out over the four categories – Test batting, Test bowling, ODI batting and ODI bowling. Stuart Broad features in both one-day and Test bowling lists.

Since the year also hosted an exciting World Cup, 13 of the 20 one-day nominations come from performances in the tournament – including Kevin O’Brien’s fastest World Cup century that helped Ireland achieve a historical win over England, five-fors by Dale Steyn and Wahab Riaz, and Ricky Ponting’s gritty century in the quarter-final defeat to India.

The awards, which celebrate the game in the past year, will be announced on February 20, and will be based on votes by a jury of former players – Ian Chappell, Sanjay Manjrekar, Geoff Boycott, Martin Crowe, Kepler Wessels, Ian Bishop, Ramiz Raja and Russel Arnold – and the game’s leading writers. Previous winners of the award, first established in 2007, have included Virender Sehwag (twice), Dale Steyn, Shahid Afridi and Kumar Sangakkara.

In addition to the jury’s selections, the Reader’s Choice Award gives ESPNcricinfo users the opportunity to have their own say and vote on the best cricket performances of the year from the list of this year’s nominees – with the winners also announced in February.

• Test batting nominations: CLICK HERE
• Test bowling nominations: CLICK HERE
• ODI batting nominations: CLICK HERE
• ODI bowling nominations:  CLICK HERE

“The ESPNcricinfo Awards celebrate the very best performances in world cricket over the past year. We want fans to tell us what they think by voting in the Reader’s Choice Award and gauge their views against those of our panel of some of the leading voices in cricket worldwide,” said Tom Gleeson, digital media vice-president, ESPN International.