By Kashif
December 9 2004

Kashif looks into Pakistani players past and present and their respective MOTM statistics. Looking at the main winners in both forms of cricket. One statistic that usually goes unnoticed is the number of motm (man of the match) awards a player has accumulated during his career. I did some analysis and discovered some interesting stats.

There is always the question as to ‘who was the true motm’ after the match, when there are many possible candidates. Home bias sometimes comes into the equation and usually 99% of the time, a motm is selected from the winning side.

Is it a good measure of analyzing who were the great players? Maybe not.
But it does give some interesting statistical finds.

Test Matches:
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Until the 70's not a lot of test match cricket was played and the team, new to test match cricket, did not win many test matches. This may reflect upon the number of awards, Pakistani test players had won.

Hanif Mohammad (55 tests), highly regarded as one the finest batsmen Pakistan ever produced, received only won 1 motm award. Fazal Mahmood (34 tests) never gained a single award. Sarfaraz Nawaz (55), Mudassar Nazar (76), Majid Khan (63), Mohsin Khan (48 tests), Zaheer Abbas (78 tests) and Muddasar Nazar (76 tests) received 1 solitary motm award in their test match careers.

Does this mean that the players were not match winners? One should not delve too much into these statistics as Michael Holding, one of the most feared fast bowlers, only gained 2 such awards! This maybe explained by the fact that he was part of a brilliant pace attack and wickets were shared.

Imran Khan (88 tests) won 11 such awards and was nominated man of the series 8 times. This reflects how much the team depended on Imran's pace bowling and how influential he was during his career to help Pakistan win test matches. Javed Miandad won 6 awards in his 124 test matches. You’d think he would have won more but we have to remember that he started at a time when Pakistan had a strong batting lineup.

Our leg spinners Abdul Qadir (67 tests) and Mushtaq Ahmed (52 tests) received 5 awards each showing the faith and confidence the Pakistan management has shown in leg spin. This trend continues on with Danish Kaneria who has 3 awards to show in his 20 test matches.

Legendary TV pundit Rameez Raja (57 tests) does not have a single motm award to show. Waqar Younis has received 6 motm awards in his 87 test matches and Inzamam, 7 in his 96 tests.

The Pakistani player who has won the most motm awards to date is Wasim Akram (104 tests). He was been awarded the motm award on 17 separate occasions and nominated man of the series on 7 occasions. He was a match winner on every 6th test match of his career and this ratio is far ahead of even his mentor Imran. (Who was nominated motm every 9th test match of his career).


ODI’s
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ODI’s really took off in the early 80’s. Test players necessarily do not display their match winning potential in this much different form of game and vice versa.

Asif Iqbal only played 10 odi matches for Pakistan but was nominated motm on 4 occasions. Discarded all-rounder Azhar Mahmood also has 4 motm awards to his credit but has played 134 odi games till date. Not an ideal comparison, but this fact is only to reiterate how well Asif Iqbal adapted to the odi format which may have come too late for his liking.

Zaheer Abbas (62 odis) does not only have an excellent SR and avg to show for his odi batting but also has the highest ratio of winning motm awards. He was nominated 8 times as the motm.

Saeed Anwer (247) has the highest number of motm awards for Pakistan, 28. He was a match winner in every 10th odi he played.

Of the current batch of players, Shoaib Malik has received a motm award on 10 occasions in 85 odis. Overall he has the 2nd best ratio of receiving a motm award behind Zaheer Abbas.

Tests: MOTM Record For other international players :-

Awards Tests %
W Akram 17 104 16.35
Kallis 13 82 15.85
Murali 14 91 15.38
Ambrose 14 98 14.29
Hayden 8 61 13.11
Warne 15 117 12.82
Pollock 11 87 12.64
Imran K 11 88 12.50
A De Silva 11 93 11.83
Botham 12 102 11.76
M.Marshall 10 81 12.35
A Donald 8 72 11.11
Hadlee 9 86 10.47
Lara 11 112 9.82
Ponting 8 82 9.76
McGrath 10 103 9.71
Sachin 10 118 8.47
Waugh 14 168 8.33
Dravid 7 84 8.33
V.Richards 10 121 8.26
Kirsten 8 101 7.92
Border 11 156 7.05
Kumble 6 90 6.67
Kapil 8 131 6.11
Lillee 3 70 4.29
Gavaskar 5 125 4.00
Walsh 4 132 3.03


The above is a selection of the best cricketers based on ratings and statistics. The motm award phenonemon was not a common feature before the 1970's. Hence why Donald Bradman and many others are not present in this list.

I will reiterate the above ranking by percentage does not suggest an alltime ranking. Only to give us an indication as to who was most likely to win a motm award in a test match. The final result is that as it stands, our very own Wasim Akram was the king of winning the most motm awards and had the best ratio too! Kallis, Murali and Warne may catch up with Wasim with the record amount of motm awards.