Australian pace ace Pat Cummins has been named as the ICC’s Test cricketer of the year.
The bowler's brilliant 2019 was capped with the honour at the ICC annual awards on Wednesday.
Cummins was chosen ahead of the likes of Ben Stokes, Neil Wagner and Mayank Agarwal to take the award.
The 26-year-old bagged 14 more wickets than any other bowler in 2019. He took 59 wickets at 20.13 as he led Australia’s attack.
Cummins is currently in India for Australia’s ODI series and will soon turn his attention to the IPL.
He also became the third most expensive auction buy in IPL history last year. Kolkata Knight Riders paid INR 15.5 crore to secure him ahead of the new season.
He will be using the ODI series to help his own preparations going into IPL 2020 where he will be looking to help KKR win a third title.
Kolkata are priced at 8.00 (7/1) with bet365 to secure more IPL glory.
Cummins honoured to claim ICC award
Cummins was delighted to take the award after a superb year.
He said: “It’s a tremendous honour to be considered the best player of last year and one which was certainly unexpected,” Cummins said from Mumbai.
“I owe much to my team, teammates and all those involved in Australian cricket for what was a really successful year for the team.
“The highlight was certainly being able to retain the Ashes which was a great reward for the hard work that went into that tour.”
Cummins also joined five Australians in the ICC’s Test team of the year.
Marnus Labuschagne, Mitchell Starc, Steve Smith and Nathan Lyon also made the cut.
The full team was named as Mayank Agarwal, Tom Latham, Marnus Labuschagne, Virat Kohli (captain), Steve Smith, Ben Stokes, BJ Watling (wicketkeeper), Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Neil Wagner, Nathan Lyon.
Meanwhile, England’s Stokes was awarded the prestigious Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for world player of the year.
Stokes, who kept his nerve to smash an unbeaten 84 in the final against New Zealand, aggregated 719 runs and bagged 12 wickets in 20 ODIs during the voting period. He also scored 821 runs and took 22 wickets in 11 Tests, the highlight being an unbeaten 135 to win a nail-biting Ashes thriller in Leeds.
