Thursday, January 05, 2006

Test Player of 2005

Here Harsha discusses over the player of the year. He discusses names of 4 players, all of them were amazing this year. I will start with Warne -

1. Shane Keith "Warney" - Had an extordinary year with the ball, gave his heart out in Ashes with both bat n ball. Finished the year with record 96 wkts and 416 runs (quite good for a bowler). He became first bowler to take 600 wkts in tests and broke Dennis Lillee's record for highest number of wkts in a year.

2. Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff - Proved himself to be THE best allrounder at the moment. Almost single handedly won Ashes for England. Finished the year with 709 runs and 68 wkts. Performed with amazing consistency and with a never-tiring approach.

3. Ricky "Punter" Ponting - Inspite of all the questions raised over his captaincy, especially after losing Ashes, he remains THE most prolific batsmen of the year in both the Tests and ODIs. One of 3 (i guess) batsman to achieve that feat. Scored 2nd highest runs ever in a calendar year - 1543. Hit 6 centuries, scored runs against all teams, in all countries (ok not India). Has now scored 27 centuries. And the rate at which he is scoring runs, im sure he will surpass Sachin's century record in less than 2 years !!

4. "Sir" Brian Charles Lara - Had an amazing year again. Broke Border's record for highest Test runs. scored 1110 runs in the year in just 9 tests. Became the 2nd highest double century hitter. Scored 5 centuries in the year, n surprisingly no halfcentury !! Has now scored 32 test hundreds, another one who is seriously threatening Sachin's record of 35 centuries. im sure he will do this in this year itself !

These were the 4 players harsha discussed, plus he named 2 other players because of some non-cricketing reasons, i won't get into that :). Instead i would add 1 more player who i think deserves to be atleast nominated :) , he is Inzamam.

5. Inzi - Scored 1000 runs in just 8 tests. Turned the Pakistani team on his own. Starting with that amazing 180+ in his 100th test to draw the series against India. He carried on and had an even amazing series against the Ashes victors England. He scored 2 hundreds in 2nd Test, scored 97 in 3rd. Scored pretty consistently at really crucial times in both forms of the game.

Its pretty tough for me to select between these coz all the top 4 had an amazing run, add to this the fact that Warney is my all time favorite player, Lara is my favorite batsman, Flintoff is my favorite allrounder (quite obvious) and Ponting one of the batsman i love to watch. It becomes EVEN more difficult.

Anyway personally i would select Shane Warne as the Test Player of the year 2005, simply coz of his outstanding performances throught the year. His ability to perform at his best inspite of all those controversies and family troubles. And ofcourse because of some personal bias :D

2 comments:

Flying Machine said...

Hiya Dude. Howz you? Looks like I gotta get abroadband connection too. to be around more often in the blog world.

Kon ?? said...

damn u don't hv a broadband connection, so till now u have been relying only on the company internet :D