The Indian trio of Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur and Axar Patel was on Wednesday nominated ICC Player of the Month award in the women and men’s categories for September.
Skipper Kaur and vice-captain Mandhana have a chance to become the first-ever Indian player to win the Women’s Player of the Month award.
Despite a poor T20I series in England at the beginning of the month, Kaur was in imperious form during the subsequent ODI series which followed.
Scoring 221 runs across the three matches, she guided her side over the finishing line in the first match with a controlled 74 not out, before she clinched the series for her team in style in the second match, striking an unbeaten 143 to seal a historic first ODI series victory for her side in England since 1999.
Mandhana, another star in India’s batting lineup and the winner of the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy for ICC Women’s Cricketer, last year, also shone in England in September.
She scored consistently to both white-ball series, with her match-winning runs of 91 in the first ODI in Canterbury and an unbeaten 79 in the first T20I in Derby standing out.
Mandhana also ended the month averaging over 50 in both formats, and with a strike-rate of 137 in the T20Is, underlining the scale of her successes during the month.
Axar, on the other hand, has been nominated for the men’s Player of the Month following a series of impressive and restrictive bowling displays against Australia and South Africa.
Bangladesh’s Nigar Sultana, who captained her side to seal their place at the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup in South Africa in 2023 is the third nominee in the women’s category.