Virat Kohli is away from the cricket field currently, but he is not away from limelight.
After being named in all three ICC teams of the decade, including as captain of the Test XI, on Sunday, Kohli won the Sir Garfield Sobers award for the best male cricketer of the decade and was also picked as the best ODI player of the last 10 years.
Former India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni won the ‘ICC Spirit of Cricket Award of the Decade’, chosen by fans for his gesture of calling back England batsman Ian Bell after a bizarre run out in the Nottingham Test in 2011.
Kohli scored 66 of his 70 international hundreds in the period taken in consideration for the award.
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In the same period, he was also the batsman with most fifties (94), most runs (20,396) and also had the maximum average (56.97) among players with 70-plus innings.
Overall, the 32-year-old has amassed 12040 runs in ODIs, 7318 runs in Tests and 2928 runs in T20 Internationals, averaging more than 50 across formats, in the last 10 years.
“The moments I hold closest to my heart in the last decade definitely have to be the World Cup win in 2011, the Champions Trophy win in 2013 and winning the series in Australia in 2018,” Kohli said in a statement.
“I never focussed on stats and numbers along the journey at all and those things just become the by-product of what you do on the field and those, for me, just end up being milestones that you cross on the way to the path to victory.”
Top Australia batsman Steve Smith has been named the Test Cricketer of the Decade, while star Afghan spinner Rashid Khan was picked as the T20 Cricketer of the Decade.
Australia’s Ellyse Perry swept the women’s awards, securing the ICC Female Cricketer of the Decade honours alongside ODI and T20 Cricketers of the Decade award.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni File picture
Mahendra Singh Dhoni (ICC Spirit of Cricket Award of the Decade)
Dhoni was chosen by fans for his gesture of calling back England batsman Ian Bell after a bizarre run out in the Nottingham Test in 2011.
From the final ball of the afternoon session on the third day, Bell on 137* was run out following a mistaken assumption that the ball had reached the rope and gone for four, with Abhinav Mukund breaking the stumps while Bell wandered off to talk to Eoin Morgan. Over the course of tea, India, led by Dhoni, decided to retract the appeal.
