World T20 champions get special awards

Port-of-Spain (Trinidad), July 6 (IANS/CMC): Members of the World T20 Champions West Indies have received special awards for their accomplishment.

The 15 players and eight members of the team management all got commemorative gold rings in recognition of their outstanding performance in Sri Lanka last year.

The presentations were made by West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) president Dave Cameron and Sports Minister Anil Roberts at a function hosted by WICB and West Indies Players Association (WIPA) here Friday, CMC reports.

“This is a truly special honour — one that all of us will cherish. This is a remarkable gift. On behalf of the team I want to say ‘thank you’ to everyone who came up with this idea and all those who made it possible,” said Darren Sammy, who led the West Indies to victory over Sri Lanka in Colombo.

“We played an amazing brand of cricket to beat Sri Lanka and win the trophy for our people. Now it feels really great to be honoured, in this way, here at home.”

Several other awards were presented. West Indies off-spinner Sunil Narine and Marlon Samuels, two stars of the World T20 triumph, won two awards.

Narine, the 2012 ICC Emerging Player of the Year, was voted Regional Limited-Overs Player of the Year and West Indies T20 Player-of-the-Year.

Samuels bagged the prize for West Indies ODI Player of the Year and the prestigious award of overall West Indies Player of the Year.

The inaugural WICB Lifetime Achievement Award went to Jackie Hendriks, the former Jamaica and West Indies wicket-keeper who played 20 Test matches between 1962 and 1969.

The WIPA Lifetime Achievement Award went to Winston Reid, the former Barbados left-arm spinner who played 53 first-class matches and 47 List A matches for his island between 1985 and 2000.

He took 205 first-class wickets and had over 1,500 wickets in club cricket in Barbados in a career which spanned over three decades.