The Alan Border Medal

Clarke a sure thing for the Border Medal

Michael Clarke will win the AB Medal tonight for a third time. He's an even surer bet than Julia Gillard and he'll dash Shane Watson's hopes of wearing the AB Medal for a third consecutive year. With the weighting so rightly given to Test match cricket and Watson missing six of the eleven Tests Australia have played in the year, then the Kleenex man had his hopes dashed by his own frail body.

Awards will also be handed out for Australia's best Test player, ODI player and for the second year, the best T20 players.

Clarke looks assured to be named Australia's best Test player, shading Michael Hussey and Ricky Ponting by a comfortable margin. He made hundreds against all of Australia's opponents, including his unforgettable 329 not out at the SCG against India. Strange as it may seem, his 151 against South Africa at Newlands was an even better innings but will be forever lost in the inglorious collapse of the team in the second innings. The voting system takes little account for captaincy but Clarke has been superb, both on and off the field. Much is made of decisions at crucial times being an indicator of leadership but so also is the manner in which a leader conducts himself. Stuck with a familiar but infantile nick name, Pup is is fast becoming the Old Dog who  knows not only when but also how. Hussey's best form was against Sri Lanka, when he faced the most of the pressure which will periodically fall on him, as it does all players as they age. It's mostly a waste of time accusing him of overstaying: has there ever been a more self-aware cricketer in the Baggy Green. Ponting had a grand Test year, culminating in a man of the match double century in Adelaide against India. Having indicated he intends to keep rolling the dice until he comes up craps, its looks unlikely that the quality of his Indian summer will be matched in the time left. There are, after all, only so many times even a champion can get up from the canvas and still throw punches that hurt.

Watson has been
outstanding in ODIs

The ODI player of the year will be more gamely fought. Clarke has again been outstanding, leading the side and providing consistently good performances with the bat. Shane Watson has missed only games in this current CBA series and has been outstanding at the top of the batting order, dominating bowling attacks with power hitting. If a single performance of the year was given in all of Australian cricket, most would plum for Clarke's Sydney triple but despite the quality of the opposition, it would have to be a near run thing when compared to Watson's 185 not out against Bangladesh at Shere Bangla Stadium last April. Made off only 93 deliveries, to say he smashed 15 fours and the same number of sixes is to grossly underplay the meaning of the word smashed. He and Clarke will be neck and neck to take the honour. As Louis the police chief says in Casablanca, the rest are the usual suspects, Ponting and Hussey. Also in the mix is David Hussey who has had his best year as a cricketer for Australia and can't be far away from a Baggy Green, despite his age. Mitchell Johnson had some very good performances early on but missed too much cricket through injury.

Australia only played six T20 games in the qualification period so anyone of five or six cricketers could be named the best. The winner is likely to be either Watson or Brett Lee but don't discount Matthew Wade as a roughie.

At the other end of the scale, Shane Warne will be inducted into the Australia Cricket Hall of Fame. It was always just a matter of time before the man sponsored by the Australia Dental Association found his way into the Hall. The big concern was what the St Kilda boy might knock off once he got in there and whether his off field record should exclude him from membership of the elite. There is little doubt he was lout and even with all the brushing and weight loss, he still manages to utter the least coherent cricket information of any of the other members of the Hall of Fame, including the dead ones. In the end, Warne is at least equal to Dennis Lillee, Ray Lindwall and Muttiah Muralitheran  as the greatest bowler the game has known and the closest thing to Bradman in terms of his ability to stride across a game and make it his. After all, the Hall isn't the exclusive haunt of angels: Miller, Marsh and Walters will gladly show Warney the ropes.

In case you are still in doubt as to how the points are allocated, perhaps the following will help.

After each game, two groups are asked to nominated their three best and allocate 3-2-1. The players are one group and umpires and certain media representatives are the other. Both groups votes are tallied and a 3-2-1 from each group awarded. Those two sets of 3-2-1 votes and added together to give the total points for that match (i.e. no player can score more than 6 points for a match). Total votes for each category (Test, ODI, T20) determine the player of the year in each category. The Alan Border Medal is decided by taking points from each category and multiplying them by a weighting. Test points are multiplied by six, ODI points by three and T20 by two. So if Kevin Rudd was a legend in his own lunch box and scored 25 MOM points in Tests, 42 in ODI's and 19 in T20s, he'd total (25x6)+(42x3)+(19x2)=314 ... obviously hypothetical because he can't count past 31.

I've used a similar system to determine my thoughts on the event but obviously with only half the number of points allocated because I didn't want to vote twice and develop a spilt personality. I have enough problems. The points aren't important but the relative positions are. So if it were the Peter Langston Medal, the tops of the tables would look like this: