BHIM-UPI TOISA 2019 Nominees: Cricket

NEW DELHI: The fourth edition of the Times of India Sports Awards (TOISA), powered by BHIM-UPI, is India's first of its kind and largest multi-discipline people's choice sports awards. TOISA is a platform created by the Times Group to recognise and reward Indian sporting talent and achievements on a global scale and will be held soon to honour the lionhearts who have given their blood, sweat and tears to make the country proud.
Ahead of the TOISA to be held on March 5, here's a recap of the how these Indian cricketers fared in the year 2019.
Virat Kohli
The captain of the Indian men's cricket team, Virat Kohli is the best batsman in the world at the moment and arguably one of the greatest ever to play the game, especially in the ODI format. The 31-year-old Kohli led India in the 50-over World Cup, where he made a plethora of records. During the course of India's campaign at the World Cup, Kohli became the fastest batsman to score 11,000 runs in ODI cricket. Kohli has taken just 222 innings (230 ODIs) to enter the 11000-run club.
The right-handed batsman also owned the record of becoming the fastest to 20,000 international runs when he scored 72 against West Indies, breaking a long-standing record held jointly by Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara. Kohli also became the first Indian and second batsman overall to hit five consecutive fifty plus scores in a World Cup.
Australia's Steve Smith was the first man to achieve the feat. In the longest format of the game, Kohli scored his career-best score of 254* against South Africa in October 2019. It was his seventh double century of his career - the most by an Indian. Kohli went past Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar in the second Test against South Africa in Pune which was also his 50th Test as skipper for India.
Rohit Sharma
After a great 2018, year 2019 yielded more great results for the Mumbai batsman, as he etched his name in the history books by becoming the first batsman to hit five centuries in a single edition of the ODI World Cup. He achieved the milestone in India's final league match against Sri Lanka in England. Rohit broke former Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara's record for the most number of centuries. Sangakkara made four consecutive tons in the last edition in 2015. He also became only the second Indian batsman after Sachin Tendulkar to score 600 runs in a single edition of the World Cup. He finished the event (2019 ODI World Cup) with the most runs (648).

Indian fast bowling attack
'The best fast bowling unit in the world' - For the first time in the history of Indian cricket, its pace battery has picked up that coveted tag thanks to their dominant run in the last few years. The unit led by unconventional fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah has been instrumental in India's successes in all formats of the game. India won all the four Test series they played in 2019 - two home and two away, which included a historic maiden series win against Australia in Australia. Bumrah took 21 wickets, while Mohammed Shami and Ishant Sharma contributed 16 and 11 wickets respectively in the historic 2-1 Test series win over Australia. Since making his Test debut in January 2018, Bumrah has taken 62 wickets from 12 Tests at an average of 19.24 while playing all his matches away from home. Bumrah also created history by becoming the third Indian to take a Test hat-trick (vs West Indies) after Harbhajan Singh and Irfan Pathan.
Smriti Mandhana
Smriti Mandhana, who was the first Indian woman cricketer to hit a double century in a domestic one-day game in 2013, became the youngest T20I captain for India when she led the women's team against England in the first T20I in Guwahati at 22 years and 229 days. Smriti won the International Woman Cricketer of the Year awards at CEAT Awards in May 2019. Smriti also became the third-fastest cricketer, in terms of innings, to score 2,000 runs in WODIs, achieving the feat in her 51st innings.