Lizelle Lee’s top-class performance against India in the South Africa Tour of India has been acknowledged by the ICC awards and she has been voted as the Player of the Month for March. A total of three players were nominated for the awards which included India’s Punam Raut for her performance with the bat against Proteas Women in the ODI series, and Rajeshwari Gayakwad for her overall performance with the ball in the Proteas tour.
Lizelle Lee played 4 out of 5 games and played all four innings during which she scored two half-centuries and a ton. She also went on to become the player of the series with a total of 288 in 4 matches. With this, she claimed the first position in the ICC Women ODI Batters Ranking.
Punam Raut also scored two half-centuries and a century taking her series tally to 253 and Rajeshwari Gayakwad claimed 12 wickets in South Africa’s tour (ODI and T20I). With South Africa’s historic win over India, they claimed the second spot in the ICC ODI rankings.
On being conferred with the award, Lizelle Lee said- “I am happy and honored to receive this award. Such accolades are a great way to keep me motivated and to continue to work even harder on my game. A big thank you to my teammates for their support as this would never have been possible without them,” as per the official ICC report.
Ramiz Raja, who represents the ICC’s voting academy said – “It is not easy scoring those many runs in alien batting conditions. It is always a challenge to adjust from bouncy pitches to slow low turning tracks and Lizelle did magnificently.”
Congratulations Lizelle Lee on being voted as the ICC Women’s Player of the Month for March 2021. @OfficialCSA @zella15j 🙌🙌 pic.twitter.com/oIr1dtcYU5
— Female Cricket (@imfemalecricket) April 13, 2021
The ICC Player of the Month awards were introduced this year starting from the first month itself. Shabnim Ismail from South Africa claimed the award for the month of January 2021 for her outstanding performance in the ODI and T20I games that she played against Pakistan that month thereby taking 12 wickets in 5 total games. For February 2021, England’s Tammy Beaumont bagged the award for her three consecutive fifties against New Zealand in 3 ODIs, scoring 231 runs in total.
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I’m a Senior Masters student pursuing Journalism and Mass Communication. An all time Cricket enthusiast. I could never play the game but always loved watching it, and now writing about it!