The International Cricket Council (ICC) has announced the nominees for the Player of the Month Award for the month of April. This award recognizes the best performer every month, taking into consideration all formats of the game.
For April, all three nominations were based on Australia vs New Zealand series that happened earlier that month. The women who have made it to the nominations are Australia’s wicket-keeper batter Alyssa Healy, all-rounder Megan Schutt and the White Ferns’ off-break spinner Leigh Kasperek.
Player of the Month Nominations for April 2021 are here 👇
Who do you think will win this? pic.twitter.com/jP85D6Rkyl
— Female Cricket (@imfemalecricket) May 6, 2021
Healy put her best foot forward in the historic ODIs against the White Ferns. Finishing the series with 155 runs in her bag in just 3 games, her average at the end stood at 51.66 with a strike rate of 98.72. Recognized as the player of the match in the last game of the ODI series, she also became the third Australian woman cricketer to appear in 200 games for her country across all formats.
In the same series, Schutt ended on a high note as she displayed brilliant bowling spells. She became the player of the match for the first ODI as she picked 4 wickets for 32 runs in 9 overs. After being named the player of the series after the last game of the series, she took her wickets tally to 7 at an economy rate of 4.66.
Kasperek’s performance in the 2 ODIs that she played made her achieve her career-best bowling figures. She took 6 wickets for 46 runs in the second ODI marking her career-best performance, followed by 3 more wickets in the 3rd ODI taking her series tally to 9 wickets in just 2 games at an average of 7.77.
This was a historic series for Australia as they broke the world record of most consecutive wins in ODI matches. The Ricky Ponting-led Australian men’s side set a record of 21 straight ODI wins which the Australian women’s team led by Meg Lanning leveled in October 2020. The last time the Australian women’s team lost in an ODI was way back in 2017.
The Australian Women’s team set a new world record in the first one-day international when they beat New Zealand Women by 7 wickets at the Bay Oval in Mount Maunganui. With the win, Australia became the first team to win 22 consecutive ODIs in the history of international cricket. They continued to maintain their winning streak as they beat New Zealand in the Rose Bowl series by 3-0, taking their tally to 24 straight wins.
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!