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by VM
Welcome to the cricket’s Razzies, folks! We've seen the ICC Awards for last year, shouldn't we see the Razzies? For those of you who aren’t familiar with Razzy Awards check this out.
Categories for the Razzies this year are for Worst Batsman, Worst Bowler and Emerging Flop-show.
I’ve restricted my nominees to Tests as I have followed mostly only Tests in the past year. I welcome you to present your own for the ODIs in a new thread if it interests you enough.
Since we’re democratic, so I will only nominate. You pick your winners!
My picks for Worst Batsman and Bowler are Hershelle Gibbs and Sreesanth respectively. My Emerging flop-show award goes to Dinesh Karthik.
In case you were wondering, the criterion for nomination for batsmen was:
- batting position between 1 and 7
- only regular dismissals allowed (no hit wicket or other strange mode of dismissal)
- should have featured in more than 5 Tests in the past year
From this list I picked people who have either have a very low (less than 30) average for a high batting position or whose averages have dipped significantly from their overall averages. That is how Vaughn, Gayle, Collingwood, Tendulkar, Dravid, Kallis and Ponting made the list.
For bowlers:
- bowling postion between 1 and 4
- should have played 4 or more matches
From this list I picked folks who either got too little wickets for someone bowling in postions 1-4 or those whose strike rates or averages have dipped significantly.
For Emerging flop-show:
- must be a relatively new player
- shown lot of promise in the past and failed in their comeback, or just failed to click in their early opportunity
I've restricted this to Indian players alone due to lack of knowledge, but feel free to add on to this list.
Worst Batsmen this Year
Here are the nominees. Fyi, it is after a lot of thought and sadness I included Dravid in this list. I didn't have the heart to, but the criterion forces me to. :(
| Name | M | Inns | NO | Runs | H | Avg | BF | SR | 100 | 50 | 0 | ||
| Dinesh Karthik | 5 | 10 | 0 | 151 | 52 | 15.10 | 266 | 56.76 | 0 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Hershelle Gibbs | 5 | 8 | 0 | 152 | 63 | 19 | 267 | 56.92 | 0 | 1 | 2 | ||
| Michael Vaughan | 12 | 21 | 0 | 578 | 106 | 27.52 | 1325 | 43.62 | 1 | 3 | 2 | ||
| Paul Collingwood | 12 | 18 | 0 | 601 | 135 | 33.38 | 1273 | 47.21 | 1 | 5 | 2 | ||
| Sachin Tendulkar | 10 | 16 | 0 | 517 | 153 | 32.31 | 778 | 66.45 | 1 | 3 | 2 | ||
| Rahul Dravid | 13 | 22 | 0 | 717 | 111 | 32.59 | 1944 | 36.88 | 1 | 4 | 0 | ||
| Ricky Ponting | 9 | 15 | 0 | 678 | 158 | 45.2 | 1111 | 61.02 | 2 | 3 | 0 | ||
| Chris Gayle | 5 | 9 | 0 | 274 | 66 | 30.44 | 296 | 92.56 | 0 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Mathew Sinclair | 5 | 8 | 0 | 147 | 47 | 18.37 | 311 | 47.26 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Jacques Kallis | 14 | 22 | 0 | 908 | 186 | 41.27 | 1677 | 54.14 | 3 | 4 | 1 |
The career averages for the established batsmen are as follows:
Hershelle Gibbs - 41.95
Michael Vaughn - 41.44
Paul Collingwood - 42.01
Sachin Tendulkar -54.23
Rahul Dravid - 53.92
Ricky Ponting - 58.37
Chris Gayle - 41.95
Mathew Sinclair - 32.55
Jacques Kallis - 55.46
Off topic, but had to add an interesting tidbit here. Own very own Dada is the second highest run getter in Tests this year, second to South Africa's Greame Smith.
Worst Bowler this Year
Here are the nominees. The good part is that this was a hard category as most bowlers (in my criterion) did rather well.
| Name | M | I | Overs | Runs | Wk | BBI | BBM | Ave | Econ | SR | 5s | 10s |
| Danish Kaneria | 4 | 6 | 231.4 | 730 | 15 | 4/59 | 5/213 | 48.66 | 3.15 | 92.6 | 0 | 0 |
| Sreesanth | 2 | 2 | 49.0 | 191 | 3 | 2/87 | 2/87 | 63.66 | 3.89 | 98 | 0 | 0 |
| Jacques Kallis | 5 | 5 | 93.0 | 236 | 4 | 2/50 | 4/90 | 59.0 | 2.53 | 139.5 | 0 | 0 |
| Mohammed Sami | 3 | 4 | 102 | 382 | 4 | 2/63 | 4/212 | 95.50 | 3.74 | 153.0 | 0 | 0 |
| Irfan Pathan | 4 | 4 | 111.2 | 340 | 6 | 3/112 | 5/117 | 56.66 | 3.05 | 111.3 | 0 | 0 |
Kaneria’s Avg and SR dropped from 33.9 and 68.1
Sreesanth’s Avg and SR dropped from 31.46 3 and 57.4
Kallis’s Avg and SR dropped from 31.22 and 66.6
Mohammed Sami’s Avg and SR dropped from 51.37 and 81.2
Pathan’s Avg and SR dropped from 32.26 and 58.8
Here are the nominees:
RP Singh: showed a lot of promise in England, but fizzled out since then
Yuvraj Singh: promised a lot with ODI and T20 form and even in the Test against Pak but failed to deliver in Australia
Dinesh Karthik: could have seized his position as reserve wicket-keeper in Sri Lanka but failed miserably with gloves and bat
Parthiv Patel: had an opportunity similar to Karthik, but failed to impress.
