Cricket Players Association Nepal (CPAN) on Wednesday announced the annual NCCS-CPAN Cricket Awards to honour the contribution of Nepali cricketers.

The inaugural awards is slated for March 5 and will fete cricketers and officials in five categories including male, female and emerging player of the year. A separate award will given as Moment of the Year while an individual contributing to the game for a long time will be honoured with the lifetime achievement.

“Our cricket teams have been setting one after another milestones. They have managed to perform extremely well despite all the adversaries. We think that its time we honour their contributions which has really helped us establish at international stage,” said CPAN President Manish Raj Pandey. “We will form an independent selection committee which will be tasked to select the winners. The selectors will logically anaylse the data that will be made available and make the right selection,” informed Pandey. “We will let the audience to decide the winner of the moment of the year,” he added. National team skipper Paras Khadka, also the general secretary of CPAN, said an online voting system will be used to select the moment of the year winner. “We have developed a software through which people can vote the nominees,” he said.

While the male player of the year will receive Rs 132,000, rest of the award winners will get Rs 66,000 apiece. The entire cost of the tournament will be borne by National College of Computer Studies (NCCS)—the title sponsor of the Award programme. Pandey and NCCS Principal Shankar Raj Joshi signed the memorandum of understanding.

Joshi was delighted to be associated with a prestigious award of cricket. “This sport (cricket) has become the real flag bearer of the country. Its a great privilege for us to be associated with the award.

I hope it gradually becomes bigger in the coming days,” said Joshi.