Castrol Awards for cricketers presented in Kochi

Colonel C K Nayudu, known as the ‘Shahenshah’ of Indian cricket, was nominated as Castrol Indian Cricketer for the era 1932-47, and the award was received by his daughter Chandra Nayudu.

The awardee for 1947-61 was Vinoo Mankad, the first Indian to complete the ‘double’ of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in Test cricket. His son Atul received the award.

‘Tiger’ Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi received the ‘Best Indian Cricketer Award’ for 1961-71.

Sunil Gavaskar, the first batsman to score 10,000 Test runs and Kapil Dev, the first Indian to take 400 Test wickets, won the awards for 1971-81 and 1981-97 respectively.

Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar, who dominating Indian cricket and the Castrol awards since their inception in 1997, shared the award for the sixth era. They have won the the Castrol Indian Cricketer of the year awards five and four times respectively.

A special trophy was presented to Sourav Ganguly for being ‘India’s most successful captain’ in Test cricket.

Cricketer Jhulan Goswami announced Castrol’s intention to start a special category for ‘outstanding Castrol Indian cricketer of the year award for women cricketers’.

Goswami was a recipient of a special Castrol award for outstanding performance in 2006. She had also recently won the ICC Player of the Year Award for women cricketers.

Several of the contemporary heroes — such as Dravid, Tendulkar, Ganguly, Zaheer Khan and Skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his Twenty20 World Champions — were present on the occasion.

Also there at Wednesday night’s function were yesteryear stars Nari Contractor, Chandu Borde, Ajit Wadekar, Bishen Singh Bedi, Gavaskar, Gundappa Vishwanath, E A S Prasanna and B S Chandrasekhar.