Dhaka, May 15 (bdnews24.com) – Cricketer Sakib al Hasan was adjudged on Friday for the Grameenphone-Prothom Alo player-of-the-year award 2008 on Friday for his fabulous all-round performance last year especially in Test cricket.
Sakib won the award beating weightlifter Fahima Akter Maina and shooter Asif Hossain, who bagged runner-up awards for winning international accolades in the same year.
Maina bagged a silver medal in the Asian Junior Weightlifting Competition in Korea and a bronze medal in the Commonwealth Youth Competition in India while Asif, the Commonwealth Games gold medallist, bagged gold medal in his favourit 10m air rifles event in the South Asian Shooting in Islamabad.
After introduction of this award by Grameenphone and Bengali newspaper Prothom Alo in 2004, all top five awards went to the national cricketers after Khaled Mashud, Habibul Bashar, Shahriar Nafees and Mohammad Ashraful.
Grameenphone-Prothom Alo give three more awards annually – lifetime achievement award, emerging-player-of-the-year award and best sportswoman.
Bashir Ahmed, the only Bengali player to play for Pakistan national hockey team, won the lifetime achievement award while chess player Minhajuddin Ahmed Sagar bagged the emerging-player-of-the-year award.
The best sportswoman award went to national women cricket team captain Salma Khatun.
Player-of-the-year Sakib bagged a cheque of Tk one lakh while the two runner-up, emerging-player-of-the-year and best sportswoman each were handed over a cheque of Tk 50,000.
Bashir Ahmed was also given a cheque of Tk one lakh.
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