23 JUNE 1998
In a press release today, Coopers & Lybrand announced that Sachin Tendulkar of India has won the Coopers & Lybrand award as the International Test player of the year. He was chosen by the Coopers & Lybrand panel as the top Test performer of the last twelve months. Ted Dexter, who chaired the panel, commented:
"This year Tendulkar has been the batsman nobody wanted to bowl at. He took Shane Warne apart in India, which illustrates his genius."The decision was backed up by a survey conducted by Cricinfo, the world's largest cricket site on the Internet. An emphatic 40% of almost 5,000 votes received in the week that the survey ran were for Tendulkar. Allan Donald was second choice with 13% and Aravinda de Silva third with 11%. Shaun Pollock and Steve Waugh received 9% of the vote. (Full results of the Coopers & Lybrand CricInfo survey.)
Rick Eyre, Cricinfo Interactive Editor, commented:
"This is a huge response for an online survey. The result clearly demonstrates that Sachin Tendulkar is the worldwide choice as top Test batsman."Tendulkar's trophy was received on his behalf by Mr C.D.Sahay, Minister (Consular) from the High Commission of India at the Federation of International Cricketers Associations (FICA)/Coopers & Lybrand Awards Dinner.
Shaun Pollock won the award as the International Young Cricketer of the Year. Graham Thorpe received the Coopers & Lybrand trophy as England's Test player of the year, which he won narrowly ahead of Alec Stewart.
Voting in the CricInfo Interactive survey was conducted from June 1st to June 8th, 1998. Registered users of CricInfo were asked to rank in order the three players who in their opinion were the top performers in Test Match Cricket in the past twelve months from a shortlist selected by Coopers & Lybrand's adjudication panel. Survey shortlist and results.
In Other Ratings News:
Donald loses top place
Allan Donald has lost his position as number one in the Coopers & Lybrand Ratings. His figures of 0 for 82 in the second innings at Lord's gave him match figures of 5 for 114; not good enough to maintain his rating on a pitch which had favoured the bowlers. He drops nine points behind Curtly Ambrose.
Hansie Cronje, Lance Klusener and Jacques Kallis have all climbed to their highest career ratings after South Africa's emphatic victory over England. Man of the match Jonty Rhodes climbed 94 points. He is now 54th in the batting, but only 90 points separate him from Mike Atherton who is 30th.