Castrol Awards For Excellence in Cricket

Castrol Awards for Cricketing Excellence – What is it all about?

It is good to see that we don’t have hell lot of Awards in Indian Cricket like Bollywood, considering the popularity of Cricket in India. But I think it is just a matter of time, very soon you will see lot of awards cropping up in Cricket as well. Not sure if the cricketers will have enough time to receive the awards or not

Coming back to Castrol Awards – The Castrol Awards have been synonymous with Indian cricket since their inception in 1997-98. Apart from Special Awards, they mainly present three awards  which are :

• Castrol Indian Cricketer of the Year
• Castrol Junior Cricketer of the Year
• Castrol Lifetime Achievement in Cricket Award

But, Lately I am seeing lot of addition to these awards and ceremonies, very difficult to keep track of what is going on? Last year, the ceremony was divided into two segments – First in Mumbai and then in Johannesburg to mark the 15th Anniversary of South Africa’s return to International cricket. In the Johanesburg segment, they presented Best batsman, Best Bowler and Best All rounder to Gary Kirsten,Shaun Pollock and Allan Donald. They also added four new awards to the three main awards of Indian segment( don’t know if this is terminology they are going to use) which are :

• Best Batting Performance in Tests – Rahul Dravid (110 & 135 v/s Pakistan at Kolkata in March 2005)
• Best Bowling Performance in Tests – Anil Kumble (10-161 v/s Pakistan at Kolkata in March 2005)
• Best Batting Performance in ODIs – Mahendra Singh Dhoni (183 v/s Sri Lanka at Jaipur in October 2005)
• Best Bowling Performance in ODIs – Sachin Tendulkar (5-50 v/s Pakistan at Kochi in April 2005)

Now, this year they hosted a ceremony for the “75 year of Indian Test Cricket”.

Sourav Ganguly has been named as “Best Captain” in 75 years of Indian Test Cricket, other nominees were late CK Nayudu, late Vinoo Mankad, Nari Contractor, Chandu Borde, Ajit Wadekar, Bishan Singh Bedi, Sunil Gavaskar, Gundappa Viswanath, Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid. I am surprised to see Sachin Tendulkar’s name in the list of nominees, I don’t have to say anything, everybody knows his track record of Captaincy. Surprisingly, Kapil Dev name is missing. Gundappa Vishwanath – I don’t know what to say about him.

Besides honouring the former Test captains, awards were also given to players of six different eras.

List of Past Castrol Awards

Special Awards