South African fast bowler, Kagiso Rabada has walked away with six major awards at the annual Cricket South Africa Awards in Johannesburg.
The first player to win six individual awards, Rabada also became the youngest to have won South African cricket’s premier accolade at the age of 21 years 62 days. Previously the record for the highest numbers of awards won was held by AB de Villiers and Hashim Amla- who won five awards each.
Rabada’s international statistics are remarkable with 24 wickets in only 6 Test matches at an average of 24.70 with a strike rate of 39.6 and 30 wickets in just 14 ODIs at an average of just 20 with an economy rate of under five.
Apart from the premier award, the pacer was named South Africa’s Test Cricketer of the Year and the ODI Cricketer of the Year. His teammates honored him by naming him South African Players’ Player of the Year and he also won the South African Fans Player of the Year. He received his sixth award for bowling the delivery of the Year to England’s Jason Roy in a T20 International at the Wanderers earlier this year.
Congratulating Rabada for his outstanding success, CSA Chief Executive Haroon Lorgat said: “Simply outstanding! Congratulations to Kagiso on recording one of the most remarkable debut years that any young cricketer has achieved in our history.Added to his record-breaking performances and statistics, is his humility and level-headedness that you would normally associate with a senior player. With injuries to our main fast bowlers during this past year, he has had to step up and lead the attack. How brilliantly has he done that!”
Meanwhile, leg-spinner Imran Tahir won the T20 International Player of the Year award after picking up 18 wickets at an economy of 6.83 in 11 matches. The KFC award of excellence went to Temba Bavuma for scoring his maiden Test century against England this year.
33-year old Stephen Cook, who made a century on Test debut against England, was named International Newcomer of the Year while the newly appointed skipper, Dane van Niekerk, was named Momentum Women’s Cricketer of the Year.
Titans batsman Heino Kuhn was named the Sunfoil Series Cricketer of the Season. He also bagged the Domestic Players’ Player of the Season award. Veteran all-rounder Albie Morkel won the Ram Slammer of the Season award whiled former South African Test opener Alviro Petersen was named the Momentum One-Day Cup Cricketer of the Season for topping the run charts with five centuries.
Lorgat also congratulated the other winners.
“This may not have been the best year for the Proteas in a team sense but there have been some great individual performances, especially from newcomers to the side. Temba Bavuma and Stephen Cook, who are other award winners this evening plus Quinton de Kock have all recorded their maiden Test centuries. Our domestic cricket remains blessed with great talents and congratulations to all the winners in that category as well.I warmly congratulate all our winners, both at an international and domestic level and let us not forget to acknowledge our umpires, grounds staff and scorers, too,” Lorgat concluded.