Star India batsman Virat Kohli was today named Ceat T20 Player of the Year while former India captain Dilip Vengsarkar was conferred with the Lifetime Achievement Award at a glittering function attended by several past and present players here.
England batsman Joe Root was named as the Ceat International Cricketer of the Year as well as International Batsman of the Year.
India off-spinner R. Ashwin won the Ceat International Bowler of the Year award while Rohit Sharma was named as the Indian Cricketer of the Year.
Kohli has been in the form of his life in the shortest format recently and was named as Player-of-the-Tournament in the World T20 held in India earlier this year. He also won the orange cap for amassing the most runs of 973 in 16 matches in the just-concluded IPL-9.
60-year-old Vengsarkar had amassed 6868 runs in 116 Tests with 17 hundreds to boot that included a hat-trick of tons in successive Test appearances at Lord's cricket ground in England.
Vengsarkar was also a part of the 1983-World Cup winning Indian team.
The award winners:
After receiving the award, India's ace spinner Ashwin said he always strove to improve every day and would even like to bowl a full quota of maiden overs in a T20 game in the future.
“The IPL gave me the opportunity to showcase my skills. I picked up off spin at 17 which was quite late, I feel, but it was first class cricket that enabled me to keep getting better,” he said.
“I strive to keep better and one day I want to bowl four maiden overs in a T20 game,” he added.
He also said he wants to perform well as a batsman whenever given a chance.
“I would like to take it with both hands whenever given the chance,” said the off-spinner.
Sharma said the number of Tests that India were to play in the coming season would help them concentrate on this traditional format.
“A lot of Test cricket is coming up and preparation for one format of the game will help us,” said the classy stroke-player, who hit three centuries in ODIs in the period for which the awards were given.
“The year 2015-16 has been a good year for us. As you saw we won a Test series in Sri Lanka after a long gap and we won the Test series at home against South Africa.
“We did well in the World T20 Championship although we lost to the West Indies (in the semis). They deserved to be champions as they played well throughout the tournament,” Sharma said.
Rahane was given the special award for becoming the fifth Indian to score a century in each inning of a Test match. He did it in the Delhi Test match against South Africa.
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