ESPNcricinfo Awards 2009 readers choice: Umar Gul overwhelming favourite in readers' voting
Cricinfo readers agreed with the jury in all but one category
ESPNcricinfo staff
19-Feb-2010
Umar Gul got 69% of the votes polled for his five-for in the World Twenty20 • Tom Shaw/Getty Images
Readers concurred with the jury for the 2009 ESPNcricinfo Awards in all but one category. Virender Sehwag and Jerome Taylor took the prizes for Test batting and bowling performances of the year in the Readers Choice segment. So did Shahid Afridi and Sachin Tendulkar in ODI bowling and batting and Umar Gul in T20I bowling for his demolition of England at The Oval.
Sehwag got 35% of the votes polled for his 293 in Mumbai. Taylor, a less unanimous choice, got 19% for his 5 for 11, which demolished England for 51 in Jamaica. He beat Shane Bond's Dunedin performance against Pakistan (18%) to the finish line by a slim margin.
The only category where the readers differed with the jury was T20I batting. While the jury picked Chris Gayle's 88 against Australia in the World Twenty20, 38% of readers chose Tillakaratne Dilshan's unbeaten 96, which carried Sri Lanka to the final of the tournament.
The most overwhelming winners were Gul (69%), for his five-for in the World Twenty20 against New Zealand, followed closely by Sachin Tendulkar (56%) for his 175 in a losing cause in the fifth ODI against Australia in Hyderabad.
| Test Batting | Test Bowling | ODI Batting | ODI Bowling | Twenty20 Batting | Twenty20 Bowling |
| Virender Sehwag (35%) | Jerome Taylor (19%) | Sachin Tendulkar (56%) | Shahid Afridi (44%) (Dubai) | Tillakaratne Dilshan (38%) (World Twenty20) | Umar Gul (69%) (World Twenty20) |
| Gautam Gambhir (17%) | Shane Bond (18%) | Shoaib Malik (16%) | Harbhajan Singh (17%) | Shahid Afridi (27%) (World Twenty20) | Umar Gul (13%) (Dubai) |
| Umar Akmal (17%) | Zaheer Khan (16%) | Tillakaratne Dilshan (7%) | Doug Bollinger (12%) | Chris Gayle (24%) | Ajantha Mendis (9%) |