The International Cricket Council (ICC) had announced the nominees for the Player of the Month Award for the month of April and had started the voting process. This award recognizes the best performer every month, taking into consideration all formats of the game.
All three nominations were based on Australia vs New Zealand series that happened earlier that month. The women who had made it to the nominations were 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
The ICC today announced Alyssa Healy as the winner of the prestigious award. 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.
Commenting on Healy’s performance in April, Ian Bishop representing the ICC Voting Academy said: “Healy deserves to win the ICC Women’s Player of the Month – April as she added the runs at the top consistently and at a good tempo to help set up Australia’s scoring in chases and target setting across all three games of their record-breaking series.” (ICC)
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.
22 CONSECUTIVE ODI WINS.
THAT’S TEAM AUSTRALIA FOR YOU!!
🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/mAoLMTpmJX
— Female Cricket (@imfemalecricket) April 4, 2021
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. Healy was the leading run-scorer for her side at the end of the series.
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. Lizelle Lee won the award for the month of March as she scored 288 runs in just 4 ODI innings that she played, which included two half-centuries and a ton.
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!