MUMBAI: One of India’s best batsmen ever and former India captain Dilip Vengsarkar, will be the recipient of the Col CK Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award. The cricketer has been nominated for the award by a committee comprising of senior media personality Shekhar Gupta, BCCI interim president Shivlal Yadav and BCCI honorary secretary Sanjay Patel. The award comprises a citation, trophy and cheque for Rs 25 lakh.

Vengsarkar came into national prominence with a belligerent hundred for Mumbai against the Rest of India in the Irani Cup game at the start of the 1975-76 season. He is the only non-English batsman to score three Test hundreds at Lord’s. The third of those hundreds – an unbeaten 126 in 1986 – set up India’s first Test win at the venue. The second Indian to have played 100 Tests, Vengsarkar was rated the world’s number one batsman in the year 1986-87. Being a member of the Indian team that won the World Cup in 1983 and the World Championship of Cricket in 1985, he led India in ten Tests in 1987-89. He was chairman of the BCCI’s talent research development committee for three years, and the chairman of the All-India senior selection committee for the period, 2006-08.

Meanwhile Bhuvneshwar Kumar is the winner of the annual Polly Umrigar Award, for being India’s best international cricketer of the 2013-14 season. The award comprises a trophy and a cheque for Rs 5 lakh.                                           

LIST OF AWARDEES

PREVIOUS WINNERS OF THE AWARD
1994 – Lala Amarnath
1995 – Syed Mushtaq Ali
1996 – Capt. Vijay Hazare
1997 – K.N. Prabhu
1998 – P. R. Umrigar
1999 – Col. Hemachandra Adhikari
2000 – Subhash Gupte
2001 – Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi
2002 – Bhausaheb Nimbalkar
2003 – Chandrakant Borde
2004 – B.S. Bedi, B. Chandrasekhar, EAS Prasanna, S. Venkataraghvan
2007 – Nariman Contractor
2008 – Gundappa Viswanath
2009 – Mohinder Amarnath
2010 – Salim Durani
2011 – Ajit Wadekar
2012 – Sunil Gavaskar
2013 – Kapil Dev Nikhanj