Trott and Cook deserving of accolades

The ICC Awards 2011 ceremony was defined by a host of absences, and two of the most enduring presences of the cricketing year. Jonathan Trott and Alastair Cook scooped their respective awards in much the same manner that they swept past all their opponents of the past 12 months. They were not the most eye-catching names in their respective categories, but when the time came to pass the envelope, the case that each man presented was simply too strong to ignore.

Trott's case, in particular, seemed to burst from left-field - which is peculiar when you think how indomitable he has been in each of his two forms of the game this year. He scored more than 1000 runs in both Tests and ODIs during the period under consideration, and has nailed down the No. 3 position with the sort of brass tacks that no England cricketer has produced for a generation.

Mark Butcher had his moments in the role, while David Gower still leaves men of a certain age rheumy-eyed, but whereas first-drop has defined the careers of legends such as Bradman, Dravid and Ponting, it has rarely been a position of permanence for England batsmen - not even for the cream of their crop, Wally Hammond and Ken Barrington, who flitted around the middle-order throughout their careers. Trott is arguably the first England batsman to seize hold of No. 3 since Ted Dexter was in his pomp in the 1960s, which is quite something to say of a player who is a week shy of completing his second full international season.

In that context, it is remarkable company that Trott now finds himself keeping. In the short but notable history of the ICC awards, the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy has been handed to four all-time great batsmen in Rahul Dravid, Jacques Kallis, Ricky Ponting and Sachin Tendulkar, as well as the indefatigable Shivnarine Chanderpaul, whose obsession with crease occupation has distinct parallels with this year's winner.

Chanderpaul, however, already had 14 years of West Indies' service to his name when he was rewarded for a purple patch in 2008. It would be in keeping with the expectations that England as a team have heaped upon themselves if Trott now goes on to justify this accolade with more of the same in the coming few seasons. Either way, it is an acknowledgement of the distance that he and his team-mates have already travelled - especially when you consider that Cook, following his remarkable arrival as a free-flowing batsman and captain in one-day cricket, is arguably the more influential of the two Englishmen who made the four-name shortlist.

Trott will never be all things to all men. His critics - Bob Willis being the most acerbic among them - find it hard to see any merit whatsoever in his one-day achievements, and even those Test fans who have sung England's praises all year long find it hard to get over-excited by yet another perfunctory clip to leg. It was interesting to note that when rain curtailed the second ODI to 23 overs a side at the Rose Bowl last week, Trott was the man to be stood down to make way for a bigger hitter.

It was an acceptance that his solipsistic style has limitations that the management cannot, and maybe would not, wish to disrupt. For, as Graham Gooch, England's batting coach, is fond of pointing out, "it's not how, it's how many", and on that score, Trott's numbers are quite extraordinary. Had he not injured his shoulder while batting at Trent Bridge, his Test average would surely still be upwards of 60 - especially given the paucity of India's attack at Edgbaston and The Oval.

If Cook's Test Player of the Year plaudits were more clear-cut after that extraordinary haul of 766 runs in England's Ashes campaign, it still came as a shock to find that there was room to honour more than one representative of the team that has stormed to the top of the World Test rankings. It certainly caught one notable ECB official on the hop, who predicted that his players were there simply to make up the numbers. This had been the year, after all, in which India won the World Cup, and as the evening's various montages made clear, the plan had clearly been to relive that glorious achievement.

Instead, after the most ignominious tour imaginable, India's solitary honour was the Spirit of Cricket award that MS Dhoni earned for his recall of Ian Bell during the Trent Bridge Test. However, he didn't exactly seem enthused by the prospect of reliving the moment, given his failure to make the short journey from the team hotel in St James Park to collect the award in person.

India's collective absence on the night was the elephant (missing from) the room. Though ICC president Sharad Pawar's presence ensured that the BCCI's involvement remained strong, the country's most notable sporting representatives were the compere, Ravi Shastri, and his former team-mate and fellow commentator, Sunil Gavaskar.

It was a snub that the India team manager blamed on a lack of invites - a charge that the ICC vehemently disputed - but whatever the reason, it made for a strangely muted atmosphere, especially given the absence of so many other winners through cricketing commitments in other parts of the globe. Had the head chef popped up on stage to announce: "Unfortunately, your dinner couldn't be here tonight..." few of the guests would have been the least bit surprised.

Oddities abounded as the evening went on, not least the long and pregnant pauses for advert breaks, as the event was filmed in one pre-packaged take to be shown on a delayed transmission around the world. And of all the topics that could have been put to Graeme Swann and James Anderson during a short table-side interview, the request to go over Kevin O'Brien's barnstorming World Cup innings was perhaps the most awkward - especially given that O'Brien was sitting at the very next table.

But in the midst of all this, England's plaudit-winners just rumbled on regardless, treating the odd circumstances of the evening with the same equanimity that has guided them through their on-field challenges in recent months. Like the other trophies they've gathered up of late, these ones will be gathering dust on the mantelpiece soon enough. At this moment in their development as a team, the next prize is always the most important.