Generally, a player wins the Player of the Match award for his/her match-winning effort in the game especially with bat or bowl. Very seldom has a player won the said award for his fielding effort during the match. However, there has been one instance when a player won the Player of the Match award only for his fielding. The player neither bowled nor batted in the match and it was the first and only such instance in ODI cricket.
This happened in the Champions Trophy (ODI) match between West Indies and Pakistan in Sharjah in 1986. Pakistan had opted to bat first after winning the toss to only get bundled out for 143 runs in 44th over of the innings. Courtney Walsh was the star picking up four wickets. The Caribbean side then chased down the target in the 34th over itself with Gordon Greenidge scoring 74 runs and Desmond Haynes remaining unbeaten on 59 balls.
They won the match by nine wickets and even as Walsh or Greenidge were expected to win the player of the match award for their efforts, everyone was surprised to see Gus Logie win it. He had not batted or bowled in the match but plucked three catches and had also affected a couple of run-outs including that of Javed Miandad. He had taken catches of batters Mudassar Nazar, Saleem Yousuf and Ijaz Ahmed.
Interestingly, Viv Richards also gets added to this list if we consider the players to win the Man of the Match without picking up a wicket or scoring a run. He had won the award against India in the semi-final of World Series 1989 for taking three catches of Dilip Vengsarkar, Raman Lamba and Manoj Prabhakar as India were skittled for just 165 runs. He didn't have to bat as West Indies chased down the total easily. However, Richards had bowled four overs and conceded 21 runs without picking up a wicket.
