Pujara, Bumrah, Kuldeep, Maxwell and Lanning win ESPNcricinfo awards for 2018
Kuldeep Yadav, Cheteshwar Pujara, Jasprit Bumrah, Glenn Maxwell and Meg Lanning are among the winners of the ESPNcricinfo Awards for best performances in 2018.
Indians dominated, winning in five out of the 12 categories. The architects of the team's landmark 2-1 win in Australia won the Test batting and bowling awards - Pujara for his tone-setting, opening-day hundred in Adelaide and Bumrah for his hostile spell in Melbourne. The closest contenders in those categories were two South Africans: AB de Villiers for his hundred in the win against Australia in Port Elizabeth, and Kagiso Rabada for his 6 for 54 in the same Test.
Kuldeep, who bowls left-arm wristspin and is now No. 2 on the ICC rankings for T20I bowlers, picked up both limited-overs bowling awards, for his performances on India's tour of England: a six-for in an ODI at Trent Bridge and a five-for in a T20I at Old Trafford.
England were also at the receiving end of the two best limited-overs batting performances: Ross Taylor's 181 not out, partly scored on an injured leg, in an ODI in Dunedin, and Glenn Maxwell's 103 not out in a T20I in Hobart.
But England also got a couple of wins: Sam Curran, the Player of the Series for the England-India Tests, was voted Debutant of the Year, while allrounder Nat Sciver won the women's bowling award for her three wickets at the cost of only four runs against South Africa at the first standalone women's World T20.
India's Harmanpreet Kaur won the women's batting award for a second year in a row, this time for her barnstorming century against New Zealand in the World T20.
This is the 12th edition of the ESPNcricinfo Awards, where a jury of former players - among them Ian Chappell, Courtney Walsh, Ramiz Raja, Daryll Cullinan, Ajit Agarkar, Phil Simmons and Mark Nicholas - and ESPNcricinfo's senior editors vote on the best performances in the three men's international formats, and women's and associates cricket in the previous year.
The two awards for year-round performance are the Captain of the Year and the Debutant of the Year. Lanning won - against the likes of Virat Kohli, Faf du Plessis and Joe Root - in the former category for Australia's series wins in India (against India in bilaterals and India and England in a tri-series), against New Zealand at home, and for clinching their fourth World T20 title.
Scotland players picked up both Associate awards - Calum MacLeod for his 140 not out in their historic win over England, and Safyaan Sharif for his 5 for 34 in the tie with Zimbabwe in the World Cup Qualifiers.
Previous ESPNcricinfo Awards winners have included Mitchell Johnson, Sachin Tendulkar, Lasith Malinga and Rohit Sharma (three awards apiece), and Dale Steyn, Virender Sehwag, Shahid Afridi, Stuart Broad and Virat Kohli (two each).
The ESPNcricinfo Awards 2018 site is here