Bangladesh’s left-arm pace bowling sensation Mustafizur Rahman has bagged the Best Debutant award at this year’s Maruti Suzuki ESPNcricinfo Awards, announced Monday.
The Best Debutant category is the only one voted on by ESPNcricinfo’s users, in addition to the jury, that this year included Ian Chappell, Mahela Jayawardene, Jeff Dujon, Courtney Walsh, John Wright, Mark Butcher and Mark Nicholas, cut and ESPNcricinfo’s senior writers and editors.
Mustafizur’s statistics for the year 2015 make for miserly reading: Four wickets at 14.50 from two rain-curtailed Tests, 6 wickets at 18.66 from five T20Is, where he has proven such a shrewd operator for one so young, and most tellingly, 26 wickets at 12.34 from nine ODIs. Including the 13 scalps in that memorable debut series versus India.
Altogether, across all three formats, the 20-year-old from Satkhira ended up taking 36 wickets for his country, at an average hovering around 13.
The ESPNcricinfo Awards recognise the best individual batting and bowling performances in cricket over the calendar year. Kane Williamson’s career highest unbeaten 242 in Wellington against Sri Lanka has been voted the top Test batting performance of 2015.
New Zealand players won three awards this year. Tim Southee took the ODI bowling award for his 7 for 33, which bundled England out for 123 in under 34 overs the World Cup; and Brendon McCullum won the Captain of the Year title.
The best ODI batting performance award went to AB de Villiers, whose 149 off 44 balls against West Indies at the Wanderers contained the fastest ODI hundred (off 31 balls) and fastest fifty (16 balls).
The award for the best T20 batting performance went to India’s Rohit Sharma, for his maiden T20I century, against South Africa in Dharamsala. The T20 bowling award went to South Africa allrounder David Wiese, who took 5 for 23 against West Indies in Durban.
