Team India skipper Virat Kohli today ed history by becoming the first player in history to win the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for ICC Cricketer of the Year. The ICC said in a statement that Kohli also won awards as the ICC Men’s Test Player of the Year and the ICC ODI Player of the Year.
Kohli was also named captain of ICC’s Test and ODI teams of 2018 for a fabulous run in international cricket.
India’s victory in the Under-19 World Cup was voted as the Fans’ Moment of the Year.The 36-member voting panel was unanimous in picking Kohli for the Sobers award. He also ended the year at No. 1 in both the rankings for Tests and ODIs.
Kohli scored 1,322 runs in 13 Tests with five hundreds during the calendar year while in 14 ODIs he amassed 1202 runs with six centuries. He also scored 211 runs in 10 T20 Internationals.
His performance was put into sharper context by the fact that India played most of their cricket in 2018 away from the subcontinent.
South African cricketer Kagiso Rabada finished second both for the overall category and the one for Test players. Afghan cricketer Rashid Khan was the runner-up for the ODI award.
Among the other major winners were Rishabh Pant, who was named the Emerging Cricketer of the Year. Sri Lanka’s Kumar Dharmasena was named the Umpire of the Year, while New Zealand cricketer Kane Williamson won the Spirit of Cricket award.