mitchell johnson

Australian pace bowler Mitchell Johnson has been chosen as the ICC Cricketer Of The Year at the annual International Cricket Council’s player of the year awards in Johannesburg.

Johnson took 80 wickets for Australia during the year and starred with both bat and ball in all formats, he beat off competition from England’s Andrew Strauss and India’s Gautam Gambhir and Mahendra Dhoni to pick up the prize.

Strauss was also beaten to the Test Player Of The Year Award, despite a phenomenal Ashes series, the award going to an equally deserving Gautam Gambhir.

India were also rewarded with the ODI Player Of The Year Award, going to Mahendra Dhoni, while the Emerging Player Of The Year was Peter Siddle of Australia.

As a consolation Strauss did find himself included in the TestXI Team of the year:

Test XI:
Gautam Gambhir (Ind), Andrew Strauss (Eng), AB de Villiers (SA), Sachin Tendulkar (Ind), Thilan Samaraweera (SL), Michael Clarke (Aus), MS Dhoni (Ind, wk and captain), Shakib Al Hasan (Ban), Mitchell Johnson (Aus), Stuart Broad (Eng), Dale Steyn (SA).

ODI XI:
Virender Sehwag (Ind), Chris Gayle (WI), Kevin Pietersen (Eng), Tillakaratne Dilshan (SL), Yuvraj Singh (Ind), Martin Guptill (NZ), MS Dhoni (Ind, WK and captain), Andrew Flintoff (Eng), Nuwan Kulasekara (SL), Ajantha Mendis (SL), Umar Gul (Pkn)

Full list of Individual awards:

Cricketer of the Year: Mitchell Johnson (Aus)

Test Player of the Year: Gautam Gambhir (Ind)

ODI Player of the Year: Mahendra Dhoni (Ind)

Women’s Cricketer of the Year: Claire Taylor (Eng)

Emerging Player of the Year: Peter Siddle (Aus)

Associate and Affiliate Player of the Year: William Porterfield (Ire)

Twenty20 International Performance of the Year: Tillakaratne Dilshan (SL)

Spirit of Cricket Award: New Zealand

Umpire of the Year Award: Aleem Dar

The four contenders will now have to wait until the sixth annual LG ICC awards on October 1st in Johannesburg, to see who picks up the Sir Garfield Sobers trophy for cricketer of the year.

Strauss is also still in the running for the Test player of the year award as are Gambhir and Johnson along with Sri Lanka’s Thilan Samaraweera. England’s Graham Onions makes the shortlist for ‘emerging player of the year’ and will fight it out with Ben Hilfenhaus and Peter Siddle from the Australian team and Jesse Ryder from New Zealand.

Strauss played a captain’s innings in each of the Ashes Test matches, leading from the front with the bat and setting an example that his charges were generally unable to maintain. He has performed better than any other England player with the bat in the current ODI series and I believe he deserves his place on the shortlist.