Maurice Ouma is the 2009 Kenyacricket.com Player of the Year

This year Kenya cricket.com reintroduced the Player of the Year award bringing in a much larger panel of judges to select Kenya's most consistent high achiever over the last 12 months.

There are 2 panels (Players & Journalists) plus a Fan poll. Each panel has 5 judges on it.

How the panels work is that after each International match, each panelist awards 3 points to the player they think performed the best, 2 points to the next best performer and 1 point for the 3rd best performer for Kenya in that match.

Fan points are allocated the same way, but based on an online poll.

After each game, the total points for each panel are tallied and the highest points total for that panel gets awarded 3 points, the second highest 2 points and the 3rd highest 1 point. These are referred to as Aggeragate Points.

The total aggeragate points from each panel plus the fan poll (3,2,1 as well) are then totalled and again the highest scoring player is awarded 3 points, the next highest 2 and the third highest 1 point for the match - known as Match Points.

By using this system, at the end of each game 3 players come out with Match Points that then go towards the end of year tally. The player with the most points at the end of the year in the Player of the Year.

Using the several levels of tallying helps remove personal bias and rewards the best and most deserving players for that match.

Please note that not all panelists were available for all matches, but we have strived to adhere to this system as much as possible.

This year, possibly because of the extra panelists, it has been the closest ever decision. In the end only 1.5 points split the top 4 performers with new captain, Maurice Ouma (pictured v Ireland in the Intercontinental Cup), narrowly edging out Steve Tikolo and Jimmy Kamande to take the award. Past winners include Steve Tikolo (2006) and Thomas Odoyo (2007). There was no award in 2008.

Congratulations to Maurice on being chosen as Kenya Cricket.com Player of the Year 2009 and to all the players who made this such a close competition.

As Maurice sits on the players panel, I thought it would be a good idea to go back and see what the result would have been if his points were not included. Had this happened, he would actually have won by a clearer margin of 2 points rather than 0.5!

My thanks to all the panelists for 2009 - I hope we can count on your input again in 2010 and to thanks also to all the fans who voted online. Hopefully we will have a much more streamlined process for this next year.

Final Points:

Player	TOTAL
Maurice Ouma	18.5
Steve Tikolo	18
Jimmy Kamande	18
Nehemiah Odhiambo	17
Alex Obanda	16
Hiren Varaiya	15.5
Collins Obuya	14
Thomas Odoyo	13
Kennedy Otieno	10
David Obuya	6.5
Rakep Patel	6
Lameck Onyango	6
Seren waters	5
Peter Ongondo	4.5
Elijah Otieno	3
Lucas Oluoch	3
Shem Obado	2
Rajesh Bhudia	2
Alfred Luseno	1

All Internationals in 2009 were included with the exception of the warm up series v Uganda at the beginning of the year and the 2 20-20s v Uganda in December.