Indian captain Virat Kohli on Wednesday was named The Wisden Almanack’s Leading Cricketer of the Year for 2018 while Smriti Mandhana won the Women’s Leading Cricketer award.
Kohli, who has now won the title thrice, is third only to Sir Don Bradman and Jack Hobbs who have won it 10 and eight times respectively.
Kohli racked up 2735 runs at 68.37 across all formats in 2018, while his Indian compatriot Mandhana, amassed 1291 runs across limited-overs formats, including 13 fifties.
On October 24, 2018, Kohli became the fastest cricketer to score 10,000 runs in One-Day Internationals. He scored his 10,000th run during his unbeaten knock of 157 against the West Indies in Visakhapatnam.
In January this year, Kohli became the first player in the history of the game to win the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for ICC Cricketer of the Year, his second consecutive, the ICC Test and the ODI Player of the Year awards following an extraordinary 2018.
Mandhana too was adjudged ‘Women’s Cricketer of the Year’ as well as the ‘Women’s ODI Player of the Year’ by the ICC. The left-handed opener Mandhana won the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Award for the ‘Women’s Cricketer of the Year’ for scoring 669 runs in 12 ODIs along with 622 runs in 25 T20 Internationals in 2018.
Mandhana was instrumental in India’s semi-final appearance at the Women’s World T20 in the West Indies, where she scored 178 runs in five matches at a strike-rate of 125.35. Mandhana became only the second India woman player to win an ICC award after fast bowler Jhulan Goswami, who was named the ICC Player of the Year in 2007.
Afghanistan spinner Rashid Khan was named the Leading T20 Cricketer of the Year for the second year in a row, following his superb performance in 2018. He took 22 wickets at an average of 8.68 for Afghanistan in T20Is, besides scalping 21 wickets in the Indian Premier League 2018.
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