Sportskeeda’s ODI Team of the Year
The International Cricket Council announced the winners of 2016 ICC awards in which India’s R Ashwin won the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for the ICC Cricketer of the Year and the ICC Test Cricketer of the Year. South Africa’s Quinton de Kock was given the ICC ODI Cricketer of the Year. Along with the awards, ICC also named two different teams of the year, one for Tests and one for ODIs.
The fans around the world had several confusions over the choices of the ICC panellists, Rahul Dravid, Kumar Sangakkara and Gary Kirsten. The period that was taken into consideration for the 2016 ICC awards was from 14 September 2015 to 20 September 2016.
But, when we consider the year 2016 (January 1, 2016, to December 23, 2016), there are a lot of players who have stamped their authorities against the opposition on a consistent basis. David Warner ended the year as the leading run scorer while his teammate Adam Zampa topped the wicket-taking charts.
With the ODIs in 2016 almost over, let us take a look at the Team of the Year in this format.
David Warner
David Warner is an automatic choice for Sportskeeda’s ODI Team of the Year after having a dream year with the bat in the limited-overs format. The Australian opener performed consistently throughout the year and ended up scoring 1388 runs in the year, the most by any batsman in ODIs.
2016 saw a rejuvenated David Warner as the New South Wales lad scored runs in each and every series he played. Coming into this year, he had four centuries since his ODI debut in 2009 and in the last 12 months alone, he notched up 7 ODI centuries, second most by any batsman in a calendar year after Sachin Tendulkar’s 9 ODI tons in 1998.
Unlike Sachin, who took 34 innings to score these 9 centuries in 1998, Warner scored all his runs in just 23 innings at an average of 63.09 and a strike-rate of 105.47. Warner also silenced all the criticisms of him failing to make it big after scoring a century by scoring a 156 and 173 against New Zealand and South Africa respectively.
With the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy just months away, Steve Smith will expect this pocket dynamo to fire and help the Aussies regain the trophy from India.