Coming out of Dubai, in exciting news, Indian pacer Arshdeep Singh has been nominated for the ICC Men’s T20I Cricketer of the Year award, in recognition of his outstanding season as joint highest wicket-taker of the season and a vital cog in India’s victorious T20 World Cup campaign.
The 25-year-old will contest this prestige with the likes of Pakistani skipper Babar Azam, Australian batting star Travis Head, and Zimbabwe all-rounder Sikandar Raza, among a number of other stalwarts in this year’s award period.
The Reddy family seemed overcome with emotion as Nitish revealed his astonishing maiden century at the MCG-just one of the emotive highs of cricketing achievements.
Apart from Mithali Raj, stylish Indian opener Smriti Mandhana has been nominated for the ICC awards, contesting for ICC Women’s ODI Cricketer of the Year owing to great performances produced in international cricket. She has been rivaled with veterans like Laura Wolvaardt, Chamari Athapaththu, and Annabel Sutherland.
Left-arm pacer Arshdeep Singh en route to guiding India to the T20 World Cup title in Barbados. He finished the year as the joint highest wicket-taker in T20Is, picking 36 wickets in 18 matches at an average of 13.5. That is the second-highest by an Indian pacer in a calendar year, behind only Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s haul of 37 wickets in 2022.
The most stunning of his performances came in the T20 World Cup, where he picked up 17 wickets to share the honors with Afghanistan’s Fazalhaq Farooqi for the highest number in the tournament. In the final, he removed Aiden Markram and Quinton de Kock in the powerplay to send jitters through South Africa’s chase of 177. The icing on the cake was that he gave away only four runs in a tight 19th over, thereby increasing the asking rate and sealing India’s win.
The sparkling performances of Mandhana have also caught the attention, as she scored 743 runs in 12 innings at an average of 61.91 and a strike rate of 96.99. With the bat, she even picked up a wicket to make it a standout season.
The 28-year-old started her 2024 campaign with twin centuries against South Africa in Bengaluru and went on to keep the momentum going with two more hundreds for the year. She gathered 343 runs in a Player of the Series performance against South Africa in June before her third century in the final game of India’s home series against New Zealand following the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup.
The all-round performance of Mandhana reached its zenith in the second match of the home series against South Africa, where she scored a century and took an important wicket to see her team through a narrow four-wicket victory. The winners of the ICC Awards 2024 will be announced later this month, in January 2025, and these nominations make the cricketing fraternity very eager.
