5 Cricketers who won the Player of the Match award for fielding

While batting and bowling have often sealed a plethora of Man of the Match awards, seldom there have been instances where a player’s astonishing fielding has got acknowledged with mainstream prizes.

Although, now in today’s game there might be a special category for acknowledging the deft fielding displays of cricketers, for the longest of times it was majorly the batters or an adequate proportion of bowlers, who used to get bestowed with conventional Player of match accolades.

It’s only been in recent years that the strenuous art of fielding is now widely treasured otherwise barely-there used to be an emphasis on a player’s fitness or his athleticism in fielding.

However, despite the emphasis being insignificant in the past, there were some revolutionary gun fielders who solely through their sheer fielding work had actually won games that it also had yielded them Player of the match titles.

In this list, let’s check out 5 cricketers who were adjourned as a POTM for their vehement fielding:

1. David Miller – 4 catches and 2 run-outs vs Pakistan, T20I 2019

There’s absolutely no doubt that David Miller is now South Africa’s biggest gun fielder who often gets placed to guard the business end like the long-on and long-off fences. Whether it’s about the direct hits at either end or about safely plucking the sky catches, Miller’s overall fielding covers everything that a modern-day fielder needs to exhibit in today’s game.

While in the IPL or for South Africa we might see Miller doing his routine saves on the park as a chief fielder, not long ago against Pakistan he was principally all around the park where his overall fielding effort had completely swamped the Pakistan team to a shoddy defeat.

By neatly chasing a challenging total of 193, the Pakistani batters- Babar Azam and Hussian Talat had stitched a scorecard of 85 runs in the first ten overs but after Talat’s wicket there began a brim of Miller’s overall fielding quest.

It was in the 11th over of Phehlukwayo, when David Miller had first exhibited his best staggering effort by firing a direct hit at the bowler’s end from the short-mid wicket area, which never allowed Babar Azam to make it in the end. Soon after this nimble action, Miller then plucked his first of four catches, by simply catching Asif Ali’s pull with absolute precision.

Yet again in the next over of Tabraiz Shamsi, Miller then pouched a missed timed hit of Imad Wasim at the long-on region with ease. However, the best enthralling instance of Miller’s hounding had occurred when an overthrow allowed him to rocket a direct hit from deep mid-wicket to eventually remove Mohammad Rizwan, who was looking for the second run.

Eventually, with Shoaib Malik then getting stranded with bowlers, both he and Hasan Ali gave two regulation catches to Miller at long-on and long-off ends.