In yet another feather on his cap, Ravichandran Ashwin on Thursday was named the ICC Cricketer of the Year award after becoming the only Indian in ICC’s Test Team of the Year.
Virat Kohli was named captain of the ICC ODI Team of the Year. Misbah-Ul-Haq won the ICC Spirit of Cricket Award at the 2016 ICC Awards as he became the first Pakistan player to win the award.
Ashwin was also adjudged the ICC Test Cricketer of the Year, which has made him only the second India player after Dravid (2004) to bag the two coveted prizes in the same year. Kallis (2005), Ponting (2006), Sangakkara (2012), Clarke (2013), Johnson (2014) and Smith (2015) are the other players to annex both the awards in the same year.
During the voting period, which ran from 14 September 2015 to 20 September 2016, the 30-year-old from Chennai played eight Tests in which he took 48 wickets and scored 336 runs. Ashwin also claimed 27 wickets in 19 T20Is.
Ashwin had finished 2015 as the number-one ranked Test bowler in the world, a position he twice reclaimed in 2016.
