Cricket News: Steven Finn chosen as ICC’s Emerging Player, despite a mere 8 test appearances
In another bizarre decision by International Cricket Council’s awards committee, English pace bowler Steven Finn has been handed the Emerging Player of the Year award after a mere 8 test matches where his performances can
be at best described as good, since none of them were astoundingly impressive.
The six foot seven inch tall pacer played as many as four of those test matches against minnows http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755 batting line-up in generally overcast and bowler friendly conditions in England.
On the other hand the other competitors in the shortlist for the emerging player included the likes of Umar Akmal, Angelo Matthews and Australian wicket-keeper Tim Paine.
What is simply mind blowing is the fact that all three of the above named players featured in all formats of the game in the last year, played a lot more cricket for their respective teams and above all won matches for their
teams on more than one occasion.
Finn is yet to play in the limited overs format for England and neither has he featured in the T20 internationals!
The gloss of the awards has been taken off by this harrowing decision and it is really unfortunate for the duo of Umar Akmal and Angelo Mathews especially.
Here are the figures of the four players in the last one year:
Steven Finn
8 tests, 32 wickets at 23.21 runs per over.
Umar Akmal
12 tests 818 runs at 37.18 runs per innings
23 ODIs 724 runs at 36.20 runs per innings
16 T20s 455 runs at 37.91 runs per innings
Angelo Mathews
10 Tests 470 runs at 36.15 runs per innings, 6 wickets at 62.66 runs per wicket
29 ODIs 563 runs at 29.63 runs per innings, 27 wickets at 28.33 runs per wicket
20 T20s 293 runs at 29.30 runs per innings, 13 wickets at 23.06 runs per wicket
Tim Paine
3 Tests 205 runs at 34.16 runs per innings, 14 catches and 1 stumping
23 ODIs 716 runs at 32.54 runs per innings, 33 catches, 4 stumpings
3 T20s 1 run at 0.5 runs per innings, 2 catch.
The figures clearly show that Umar Akmal and Angelo Mathews had far better credentials for the award than the English pace man and the decision to award him simply makes a mockery of ICC’s high profile ceremony.
The duo of Umar and Mathews have featured regularly in their teams in the last one year and have cemented their spots in all three formats of the game which is highly credible in such an early stage of their careers.
Finn as mentioned earlier has not even played in more than one format of the game and has not really set the world alight, which makes one wonder what prompted the ICC award selection panel to make the decision in his favour.
This panel was chaired by former http://www.senore.com/Cricket/West-Indies-c760 captain and current chairman of the ICC Cricket Committee Clive Lloyd.
It also included stars such as Angus Fraser of England, Matthew Hayden of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Duncan-c54739 Fletcher.
Perhaps the ICC wanted to spread the awards amongst as many teams as possible, and since no other English player won any other award, Finn was chosen over more deserving candidates. Once again an ICC decision has raised eyebrows
and irked the cricket fans for the wrong reasons. Even Finn who was the recipient of the award felt humbled, and perhaps felt as surprised as the rest of the cricketing world.
Nonetheless he was grateful in his acceptance speech, "It's a great honour, and one that I wasn't expecting. It's been a great honour just to play Test cricket for my country over the past 12 months, because Tests are the
highest level of the game, and though it's been tough at times, there's the joy of representing your country."
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