ICC awards a farce, says Ranatunga

The omission of the world's highest Test wicket-taker Muttiah Muralitharan from the ICC awards made it a "farce and a joke" Arjuna Ranatunga said.

The omission of the world's highest Test wicket taker Muttiah Muralitharan from the ICC awards made it a "farce and a joke," Sri Lanka's former world cup-winning skipper Arjuna Ranatunga said on Thursday.

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Sri Lanka's star spinner Muralitharan was not given a place in the Test Team of the Year announced at the inaugural awards of the International Cricket Council, but the man who is trailing him, Australia's Shane Warne, was included.

"You expected better from a respected panel of judges," Ranatunga told AFP. "They said they looked at the performance of players in the past year, but that does not appear to be the case."

"This is a farce. It is a joke to leave out Murali and give an award to Shane Warne. People will have doubts about (the credibility of) the ICC. The performance of Murali in the past year was far ahead of Warne."