Virender Sehwag was voted for the best individual Test batting performance for the second consecutive year while Sachin Tendulkar was picked for the ODI honour for 2009 in the third annual ESPNcricinfo Awards night here on Friday.
The third batting award, for Twenty20 cricket, went to West Indies captain Chris Gayle.
West Indies pacer Jerome Taylor bagged the Test bowling award, while the bowling honours in the ODI and Twenty20 formats went to two Pakistanis, Shahid Afridi and Umar Gul, respectively.
The awards recognise the best individual batting and bowling performances in 2009, in all three formats of the game.
Sehwag’s thrill-a-minute 293 against Sri Lanka in Mumbai was voted top Test batting innings for 2009 by all but one member of the jury. He won the award last year for another double hundred against Sri Lanka — a match-winning 201 in Galle.
Tendulkar took the batting honour in ODIs with an innings for a losing cause. His 175 came while chasing 351 against Australia in Hyderabad, where he stood alone as his teammates fell around him.
Taylor, who won the award for the sensational 5 for 11 in Jamaica that hurtled England to defeat in a match seemingly headed for a draw had to fight off stiff competition from Stuart Broad’s Ashes-winning 5 for 37 at the Oval.
Afridi won the ODI bowling award for his 6 for 38 in Dubai, which tore into the Australian batting line-up after their openers had got off to a comfortable start.
He was a clear winner in the category, beating Andrew Flintoff’s 5 for 19 against West Indies in St Lucia in a rain-shortened match.
Afridi’s teammate Umar Gul took the bowling award in Twenty20 internationals for a searing 5 for 6 at the Oval, which blew away the New Zealand lower order in the World Twenty20.
His closest competition came from another performance from himself: his 4 for 8 against Australia in Dubai.
The closet race in this year’s awards was for Twenty20 batting and Gayle’s 50-ball 88, which featured the shot of the World Twenty20 — a monster straight six off Brett Lee, sneaked past Tillekaratne Dilshan’s 57-ball 96 in the semi final of the same tournament.
Three teams share the six awards for 2009: two wins apiece for Pakistan, West Indies and India.
Besides the award voted by a jury of independent experts, there was also Statsguru Awards, based on statistical evidence derived from Cricinfo’s comprehensive stats database.
Gautam Gambhir was chosen as the batsman of the year 2009 as well as Test batsman of the year for Statsguru Awards while Sehwag was the ODI batsman of 2009.
The panel for the jury award consists of Geoffrey Boycott, Ian Chappell, Sanjay Manjrekar, Harsha Bhogle, Daryll Cullinan, David Lloyd, Tony Greig, Peter Roebuck and Ramiz Raja and Cricinfo’s senior editors.
