The International Cricket Council (ICC) is once again planning to going back to make the announcements of the ICC awards in the month of October itself after the uproar over the organisational failure of the ICC. That used to happen till 2012, possibly even 2013 but then got pushed back to November and then December. Two days after India’s thrashing of England 4-0 in the recently completed Test series, the ICC Test team of the year was announced. The decision of naming Alastair Cook as the captain of the Test team and the exclusion of Virat Kohli left the public fuming.
Gary Kirsten, Rahul Dravid and Kumara Sangakkara, who selected the ICC Test team of the year, would have their own reasons to justify the selection but the timing resulted in an uproar.
The reason for the exclusion of Virat Kohli from the Test side was because of the cut off date. India’s thrashing of both England and New Zealand came after the cut off date and Kohli scored two of his three double hundreds after that.
Though, Virat has an excellent record as a captain in 2016 but could not be included just because of his leadership as he lost out as a batsman.
Somebody closely associated with the ICC quoted: “There’s a reason why the 2016 lists were announced on December 22… This year, we did away with the Hall of Fame members selecting the many individual winners and this change was ratified by the Board in October…”
“It was after the Board’s approval that things started to move. The timing didn’t work out for us, but the 2015 lists had also been announced in December.
“However, from next year, we’ll probably revert to the old practice of making the announcements by October.”