South Africa’s Smith sweeps ICC awards

Indian players failed to make a mark as Australians and South Africans swept the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) Annual Awards with Steve Smith clinching the coveted trophies of Cricketer of the Year and the Test Cricketer of the Year.

Smith became the fourth Australian and 11th overall to win the prestigious Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy after being named as the ICC Cricketer of the Year 2015.

Smith follows in the footsteps of Ricky Ponting (2006 and 2007), Mitchell Johnson (2009 and 2014) and Michael Clarke (2013) to lift the coveted trophy since the inception of the awards in 2004.

Other recipients of the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy include Rahul Dravid (2004), Andrew Flintoff and Jacques Kallis (joint-winners in 2005), Shivnarine Chanderpaul (2008), Sachin Tendulkar (2010), Jonathan Trott (2011) and Kumar Sangakkara (2012), the ICC said in a statement. The top-order batsman was also adjudged the Test Cricketer of the Year, which has made him only the seventh cricketer after Dravid (2004), Kallis (2005), Ponting (2006), Sangakkara (2012), Clarke (2013) and Johnson (2014) to bag the two coveted prizes in the same year.

South Africa’s ODI captain AB de Villiers was named the ODI Cricketer of the Year for the second time in a row.

During the voting period, which ran from September 18 2014 to September 13 2015, the 26-year-old Smith finished as the leading run-scorer in Tests with 1,734 runs in 13 matches at an average of 82.57.