LONDON, CMC – Chris Gayle is in line for another major award to be announced on Friday.

The West Indies captain is one of five batsmen vying for ESPN-Cricinfo’s award for the Best Test Batting performance of last year.

Gayle’s superb 165 against Australia at Adelaide is one of the five performances that the World’s leading cricket website has under consideration for the award.

The other innings in contention are Strauss’s 161 on the first day of the Ashes Test at Lord’s last summer, Jonathan Trott’s debut century in the Ashes decider at The Oval, Virender Sehwag’s 293 against Sri Lanka in Mumbai, and Umar Akmal’s 129 in Dunedin in his first Test innings.

The website noted that the five performances edged out major innings from Ramnaresh Sarwan, Phillip Hughes, Daniel Vettori, Gautam Gambhir, Mohammad Yousuf, Fawad Alam, and Rahul Dravid.

The top five performances were drawn on the basis of votes from a 14-member jury that includes some of the leading cricket experts in the World and Cricinfo’s senior editors.
It’s a departure from the usual year-end awards looking at overall performances, ESPN-Cricinfo’s honours are in two categories: a jury-based award looking at the year’s best batting and bowling performances and a stats-based award using numbers from Cricinfo’s extensive database.