Mahindra Scorpio TOISA: Ravichandran Ashwin wins Cricketer of the Year Award

MUMBAI: India's premier spinner and the top-ranked bowler and allrounder in the ICC ratings, Ravichandran Ashwin, has been voted winner of the TOISA Cricketer of the Year Award at the Mahindra Scorpio Times of India Awards in Mumbai on Monday.
Ashwin, 30, beat his Test captain Virat Kohli, team-mate Ajinkya Rahane and star women's allrounder Harmanpreet Kaur, who was TOISA Cricketer of the Year at the inaugural event in 2015.
The TOISA awards reward the best of Indian sport in 2016 and celebrate the future and golden past of the country's athletes, and in cricket the esteemed jury felt that Ashwin's performances were outstanding. The 30-year-old was pivotal to India's rise to the top of the ICC Test Championship, and no other bowler took more than his 72 wickets at an average of 23.90 and strike-rate of 48.7 from 12 Tests in 2016.
During these 12 months, Ashwin broke Virender Sehwag's record of most Man-of-the-Series awards in Tests, picked up his 200th Test wicket in his 37th match, the second-fastest ever to the landmark, and became just the second Indian after Kapil Dev (in 1979 and 1983) to make over 500 runs and take over 50 wickets in Tests in a year. In December, Ashwin claimed his seventh ten-wicket haul in just his 43rd Test, becoming the third-fastest to do so. His match haul of 12/67 against England in Mumbai put him at sixth in India's all-time list of Test bowlers (he has since moved to fifth).
In February 2016, Ashwin had achieved India's then-record figures of 4/8 in T20Is, which was surpassed by the legspinner Yuzvendra Chahal in January this year.
Distinguished TOISA jury member Gautam Gambhir, India's third most successful Test opener and two-time World Cup, felt that Ashwin's achievements were impossible to overlook. "What Virat has achieved is extraordinary, and he looks primed to break a few more records as his career continues to soar, but this is a batsman's game and too often bowlers get over-looked," he said. "I have said it before and I am repeating myself - Ashwin has been instrumental to the Indian team's rise to No 1 in Tests and he deserves all the credit. This is a world-class bowler who thrives on picking away at opposing batsman and the way he has elevated his status over the past year, which coincided with India's superb run of form in Tests, is nothing short of phenomenal."
Under Kohli, India twice reached the pinnacle of the ICC Test rankings in 2016 - first in the West Indies and then when they beat New Zealand at home. Under Kohli, India also beat their earlier record of consecutive Tests without defeat (17). Last year, Kohli became the first Indian batsman/skipper to score three Test double-centuries in a year and the first Indian captain to win two Test matches in the West Indies. He was India's leading run-getter in Tests, ODIs and T20Is in 2016; the fastest batsman to 7000 ODI runs; and he now averages over 50 in all three formats. In the 2016 IPL, he burned up the charts with a record 973 runs in 16 matches with four centuries and seven fifties.
In January 2016, Harmanpreet's 31-ball 46 helped India win their first series in Australia, and complete their highest successful chase in T20Is. She then topped India's batting and bowling charts during the ICC Women's World Twenty20, and was a member of the team that won the Women's T20 Asia Cup. Harmanpreet also became the first Indian cricketer - male or female - to join Australia's Big Bash League.