The CWI/WIPA Awards are a set of annual cricket awards given jointly by the Cricket West Indies (CWI) and the West Indies Players' Association (WIPA). The awards recognise and honour the best West Indian international and domestic cricketers of the past season. The awards were known as WIPA Awards until 2013 when the CWI, then known as West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), and WIPA decided to jointly host the awards function.
The West Indies Players' Association (WIPA) started the WIPA Awards in 2004, with First Citizens Bank as its title sponsor.[1] The awards were called "First Citizens WIPA Awards" for the first nine years, after which WIPA and the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) agreed to jointly organize and fund the awards with the function being renamed as "WICB/WIPA Awards".[2] After West Indies Cricket Board was renamed as Cricket West Indies, the awards have come to be known as "CWI/WIPA Awards".
The winners of the awards are selected by a panel of judges which mainly consists of eminent former cricketers from the West Indies. The panel of judges for the inaugural awards in 2004 included Ian Bishop, Joey Carew, Tony Cozier, Gordon Greenidge, Gus Logie, Vivian Richards and Ricky Skerritt.[1]
Brian Lara won the first ever WIPA Player of the Year Award in 2004[1] and went on to win it the following two years as well to complete a hat-trick. Apart from Lara, three cricketers have won the award more than once: Shivnarine Chanderpaul (2008 and 2009), Chris Gayle (2007 and 2011) and Marlon Samuels (2013 and 2016). Chanderpaul has won the Test Player of the Year award four times (2008, 2009, 2013 and 2014), the most by any player, while the ODI Player of the Year has been won twice each by Chanderpaul, Gayle and Samuels. The T20I Player of the Year award was introduced in 2010 and only Sunil Narine has won it more than once (in 2013 and 2014).
The only award in women's cricket, Women's Player of the Year, has been won by Stafanie Taylor for a record nine times, including eight wins in succession from 2009 to 2016.[3][4]