Australia’s men’s Test Player of the Year award has been renamed to honour legendary spinner, Shane Warne, the country’s cricket board announced on Monday.

The Shane Warne Men’s Test Player of the Year award will be presented annually at the Australian Cricket Awards.

Cricket Australia (CA) chief executive, Nick Hockley, and Australian Cricketers Association (ACA) CEO, Todd Greenberg, announced the renaming of the award during the Boxing Day Test against South Africa as a tribute to Warne. He died of a suspected heart attack in Thailand earlier this year.

One of Australia’s all-time greats

“As one of Australia’s all-time greats, it is fitting we acknowledge Shanes’s extraordinary contribution to Test cricket by naming this award in his honour in perpetuity,” Hockley was quoted as saying by cricket.com.au.

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“Shane was a proud advocate of Test cricket and you only have to look around at all the fans who came out to the MCG in their floppy hats and zinc on Boxing Day to realise what a profound impact he had on the game,” he said.

Warne himself won the award once in 2006 for his record 40 wickets in 2005.

The Australian Cricket Awards will be announced on January 30.

‘Shane had an incredible impact on Test cricket’

“I’m proud that the ACA, along with Cricket Australia, is able to recognise the incredible impact Shane had on Test cricket with an award named in his honour,” Greenberg said.
“While he was a once-in-a-generation player, he was very much a man who understood the important contribution all players made to Australian cricket.

Also read: Sharne Warne lives on in every nook, corner and turn in Melbourne

“He played an important role in the formative years of the ACA and never knocked back an opportunity to promote and grow the game, and once they came, nobody knew how to put on a show quite like Warnie, particularly here at the MCG,” he added.

(With Agency inputs)