ICC Cricketer of the year award should go to Angelo Mathews

Nominations for the ICC Cricketer of the Year include - Mitchell Johnson, Kumar Sangakara, AB DeVillers and Angelo Matthews

ICC Cricketer of the year is one of the toughest awards to give considering the player has to be rated on various parameters. That's a tough choice.

My best bet is Angelo Matthews for the ICC Cricketer of the year award. He scores runs, he takes wickets, he fields, he captains, what more can a cricketer provide! The kind of innings that Angelo had to play over the past couple of months were under quite some difficult circumstances. One might argue that Sangakara has done the bulk of scoring for Sri Lanka over the past couple of months, but Mathews who comes in to bat at no.5-6 has played some crucial innings in both test matches as well as ODIs. Whether be it putting up a fighting total or saving the test hes done it all in the past 12 months, As a captain, he also went on to lead Sri Lanka in difficult times. If one takes a look at the Sri Lankan side, it is a lot dependant on Sanga, Jaya and Dilshan to do the bulk of the scoring. But in the past 12 months neither Dilshan nor Jaya have been in great form (not denying that they have played some good innings). So, the Sri Lankan team was largely dependant on the form of Sanga. Apart from that they have a pretty fragile batting line up with most players who do not have an assured place in the team. In such situation, Mathews comes up to the big stage and has scored enough runs at a consistent rate. Moreover, his medium-fast bowling has proved to be more than handy. Mathews has extended this form from tests to ODIs to T20s, hes done it all in the past 12 months.

I would give him a slight edge over Sanga and Mitchel definitely. Now the question, has he been better than AB Devillers? ABD matches Mathews in terms of the runs scored, captaincy and in place of bowling, his keeping substitutes for the added skill. But compared to a Sri Lankan side the South African side is far more settled with one of the best bowling line up in the world - Steyn, Morkel, Philander. As far as batting is concerned, Amla, Du Plesis, Duminy and now DeKock have provided a much healthy and stable batting line-up. That's where Mathews gets the edge for supporting the fragile batting line-up.

People often come up with some other facts that ABD has played a large number of sports at school level and excelled at most of them. As a fact, Mathews was also a similar person and had won an award from Milo(the malt drink) for being the best all round student in SriLanka (this i came across while doing a study on a project for International Marketing as a part of my MBA currciulum :P)

That's it from me with the amateur writing.