Decade star

Barbados and West Indies superstar, Deandra Dottin, has been named as one of the best Twenty20 International players of the last decade.

In the International Cricket Council awards announced on Monday, Dottin was among the sport’s governing body T20 International Team-of-the-Decade, alongside West Indies teammate and captain Stafanie Taylor.

The team was headed by Australian Ellyse Perry who was named women’s Cricketer-of-the-Decade as well as the top One-Day International and T20 player as she cleaned up in the women’s awards.

Dottin, one of the world’s leading all-rounders in both white-ball formats, has emerged over the last decade as one of the Caribbean side’s most trusted players and one of international women’s cricket’s most devastating hitters.

In 96 matches during the period under review – from January 1, 2011 until present – Dottin garnered 2 149 runs at an average of 25 with one hundred while picking up 55 wickets, to make her way into the XI.

The 29-year-old managed a single hundred during the last decade, smashing a 67-ball 112 against Sri Lanka in Antigua back in 2017.

All told, Dottin has made 2565 runs from 118 T20 Internationals at an average of 26 and has taken 61 wickets at 18 runs apiece with her medium pace.

She was in excellent form on West Indies Women’s five-match T20 International tour of England last September, averaging 37 from five innings while scoring two half-centuries, to top the scoring charts on either side.

Taylor, meanwhile, has been named in the T20 International and ODI Teams-of-the-Decade, following consistent performances for West Indies across both formats.

The 29-year-old Jamaican scored 2502 runs at an average of 35 from 90 T20 International appearances, while taking 76 wickets with her trusted off-spin.

Taylor also managed 3561 runs at an average of 44 with three hundreds, in 95 ODIs during the period under review.

She was one of two Windies women to make the ODI team, with off-spinner Anisa Mohammed included after snaring 116 of her 151 career wickets from 87 matches at an average of 20, during the awards period.

On the men’s side, West Indies opener Chris Gayle and current white-ball captain Kieron Pollard were included in the ICC men’s T20 Team-of-the-Decade.

The 41-year-old Gayle, the world’s most successful T20 batsman, averaged 32 while scoring 1010 runs from 38 matches with a hundred – exactly 100 not out in the last T20 World Cup in India four years ago.

Pollard, meanwhile, gathered 1 036 runs at an average of 30 from 56 T20 Internationals, while taking 26 at 23 runs apiece with his deceptive slow medium.

As expected, however, there were no West Indies players found in the ICC men’s Test Team-of-the-Decade nor the ODI Team-of-the-Decade.

India captain Virat Kohli was named the ICC’s men Cricketer-of-the-Decade as he and Perry emerged the big winners in the ICC Awards.

Australian batsman Steve Smith was crowned the best Test player.

Kohli, who was also named ODI player of the decade, lifted the 2011 World Cup and the 2013 Champions Trophy with India, before inspiring their first Test series victory on Australian soil two years ago.

“It’s just been an honour for me to be able to go out there and perform for my team, and it’s a great honour for me to win this award,” Kohli said in a video message.

India’s all-formats captain was the decade’s highest run-scorer with 20,396, hitting the most fifties (66) and having the highest average (56.97) of players with more than 70 innings.

He was also the only player with more than 10,000 one-day international runs, including 39 centuries and 48 fifties at an average of 61.83.

Smith, who averaged 65.79 with 26 centuries and 28 fifties, won the Test award despite his role in the ball-tampering scandal at the 2018 Cape Town Test which saw him banned for a year.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan spinner Rashid Khan said he was “speechless” after being picked as the men’s T20 player of the decade.

(BT/AFP)