Bhuvneshwar Kumar credits team-mates after receiving BCCI Cricketer of the Year Award

Bhuvneshwar Kumar

Indian medium-pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar has expressed his delight at receiving the Polly Umrigar Trophy for the Cricketer of the Year Award at the BCCI awards function in Mumbai on Friday. During the period of consideration for the award, Bhuvneshwar picked up 22 wickets from 7 Tests, 17 wickets from 22 ODIs and 7 wickets from as many T20Is, establishing himself as an integral member of the bowling unit across all formats in the process.

"I would like to thank all my team-mates today," Bhuvneshwar said. "Without them, I wouldn't have been able to hold this trophy."

"This reminds me that when Virender Sehwag was awarded the Cricketer of the Year trophy in 2007-08 and I was the Under-19 cricketer of the year, I walked up to him and asked him if I could see from close how the big Cricketer of the Year trophy is," Bhuvneshwar told the audience. "It feels really special to hold this trophy today."

Former India captain Dilip Vengsarkar, meanwhile, received the CK Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of a Test career which lasted 16 years, with Vengsarkar scoring 6,868 runs from 116 Tests at an average of 42.13 in that time.

"I was going through the list of the previous award winners and it's an immensely honourable feeling to have joined such a special league. I thank the BCCI for honouring me with this prestigious award," Vengsarkar said.

Some of the previous recipients of the award include greats of the ilk of Sunil Gavaskar and Vijay Manjrekar, just to name a couple.

While a number of BCCI bigwigs were present at the ceremony, the absence of N Srinivasan and Sundar Raman, the ICC Chairman and IPL Chief Operating Officer (COO) respectively, didn’t go unnoticed, with both of them under the scanner for their alleged involvement in the IPL spot-fixing case.