The 23-year-old has had a remarkable year, averaging 12.40 in Test matches and 21.80 in ODIs. Her phenomenal accuracy with the ball is illustrated by her economy rate of 2.10 in Tests and 3.17 in ODIs.
"The other players who were nominated were Lisa [Sthalekar] and Claire [Taylor], they performed equally well, so it was tough to pick anyone from the three.
I want to thank all my coaches, my family, my employers Air-India and all my teammates for supporting me. My coaches Swapan Sadhu, Poornima Rao and senior players in the Indian team have helped me a lot," Goswami said.
Her best bowling of the voting period came when she took ten wickets at Taunton to help India win their first Test series in England in August last year. She had also scored her career best 69 in the first Test.
It was a quite rare sight for Indian cricket that none of their hyped players from the men's team were even nominated, while a female counterpart took home the top prize in women's cricket.
Some of the players from the Indian Twenty20 team went up to Goswami and congratulated her on the achievement.
"I met a few players from the Indian team. Infact, Mahendra Singh Dhoni presented me with the award. I also spoke to [Robin] Uthappa, Sreesanth and Venkatesh Prasad and they all congratulated me. They could not stay for a long time, as they had to rush to Durban," she said.
"I also got a chance to chat with Adam Gilchrist and Andrew Symonds. In fact, I had a long chat with Symonds and we spoke a lot about cricket," Goswami added.
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