ESPNcricinfo Awards 2011: Readers pick Indians and Pakistanis
ESPNcricinfo's readers have picked Sachin Tendulkar's 146 against South Africa in Cape Town as the Test batting performance of 2011, matching the Awards jury, who too voted the innings as the best of the year.
Indian batting faces off against Pakistani bowling in the readers' picks. Virender Sehwag's double-century against West Indies was the overwhelming favourite for ODI batting innings of the year. The two bowling choices were performances against Sri Lanka - Junaid Khan's 5 for 38 in Abu Dhabi, and Shahid Afridi's 5 for 35 during the ODI leg of the same series.
Sehwag's innings, the second double-hundred in ODIs, polled nearly twice as many votes as the nearest contender, MS Dhoni's 91 not out in the World Cup final. In the other categories, the voting was more even, with margins of between 10 and 20% separating the top two.
The Test batting category was the only one on which the readers and ESPNcricinfo's jury agreed. While Kevin O'Brien's 113 against England, the jury's choice for ODI batting performance of the year, was No. 3 on the readers' ODI batting list, the jury's winners in the bowling categories - Doug Bracewell in Tests and Mitchell Johnson in ODIs - only came in at No. 5 each on the readers' tallies.
There was more unanimity among the readers on the ODI performances than the Test ones - the winners in the one-day categories both polled about 27% of the votes each, as opposed to 23% in the Test segments.
| Test Batting | Test Bowling | ODI Batting | ODI Bowling |
| Sachin Tendulkar 146 v SA (23%) | Junaid Khan 5 for 38 v SL (23%) | Virender Sehwag 219 v WI (30%) | Shahid Afridi 5 for 35 v SL (28%) |
| Rahul Dravid 146 v Eng (20%) | R Ashwin 6 for 47 v WI (20%) | MS Dhoni 91* v SL (16%) | Lasith Malinga 5 for 28 v Aus (19%) |
| Kevin Pietersen 202 v Ind (15%) | Vernon Philander 5 for 15 v Aus (19%) | Kevin O'Brien 113 v Eng (13%) | Munaf Patel 4 for 29 v SA (15%) |