Tendulkar named ICC Cricketer of the Year 2009-10 and People's Best

Double Happy : Sachin Tendulkar with  ICC cricketer of the year 2009-10 and  People's Choice awards

Sachin Tendulkar, India's cricketing icon, takes two honours at the prestigious LG ICC Awards, held at a glittering ceremony in Bengaluru.

The Little Master was named Cricketer of the Year after fighting off stiff competition to take the award from fellow short-list nominees Virender Sehwag of India, Hashim Amla of South Africa and England’s Graeme Swann.
He becomes the seventh player to win the coveted Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy, adding to his People's Choice Award earlier in the evening.

Tendulkar was voted to the award by the general public with South Africa’s AB de Villiers, Sri Lanka’s Mahela Jayawardena, Australia’s Michael Hussey and the England captain Andrew Strauss also nominated.

The batsman follows in the footsteps of his compatriot Rahul Dravid (2004), Andrew Flintoff and Jacques Kallis (joint winners in 2005), Ricky Ponting (2006 and 2007), Shivnarine Chanderpaul (2008) and Mitchell Johnson (2009) to take the top award.

“It's fantastic to win this award, I’m really excited to have won two awards and this last season for the entire team has been really special," he said.

“I think right from the start of the season when won in Sri Lanka and I scored a hundred in the finals and from there on the season took off for us. We became No 1 in the Test rankings, something we all wanted to achieve and we’ve been able to maintain our performances in the last 10 months.

“To win both of these awards tonight, Cricketer of the Year and the LG People’s Choice Award, is special and it’s the game’s way of appreciating someone’s performance. It feels great to have two trophies in front of me and I am feeling very proud and happy.”

India batsman Virender Sehwag did not leave empty handed after he won the International Cricket Council (ICC) Test Player of the Year.

Sehwag prevented teammate Tendulkar from claiming a hat-trick of awards and fought off competition from the South African duo of Dale Steyn and Hashim Amla to claim the first ICC award of his career.

During the 12-month voting period, Sehwag put in some remarkable performances with the bat, making 1,282 runs with an impressive average of 85.46 in the 10 Test matches he played. He scored six centuries and four half-centuries during the period.

“It’s fantastic to win the award to take over the title from Gautam Gambhir,” Sehwag, 31, said when collecting the award from the former West Indies bowler Courtney Walsh.

“I try to play the best I can in Test match cricket and play the same way I do in every format of the game.

“I’m a huge fan of Test cricket and I love to play it more than Twenty20 or one-day cricket and the game is something I love to play.”

The evening also saw the ICC and the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations (FICA) induct Courtney Walsh, Joel Garner, Rachael Heyhoe-Flint and Bishan Bedi into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.

West Indies fast bowlers Courtney Walsh and Joel Garner along with the late Ken Barrington of England were named to join the 60 male members of the Hall of Fame while England’s Rachael Heyhoe-Flint becomes the first woman to be inducted.

Walsh, Garner and Heyhoe Flint attended the LG ICC Awards this evening at the Grand Castle and were inducted by one of the original 55 inductees, Bishan Bedi who also received his commemorative cap from ICC Chief Executive Haroon Lorgat. The late Ken Barrington will be inducted in the UK next summer in a ceremony involving the former batsman’s family.

“The most memorable part of my career was hearing my name called for the first time for West Indies and I’m honoured to have been named in the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame,” said Walsh, who represented the West Indies in 132 Tests and 205 ODIs and claimed 519 Test scalps and 227 ODI wickets in the process.