ICC announced the four nominees for the 2021 ICC Women's T20I Player of the Year.
India’s star batter, Smriti Mandhana, is among the four women's cricketers nominated by the International Cricket Council (ICC) on Thursday (December 30) for the 2021 ICC Women's T20I Player of the Year.
Apart from Mandhana, England's Tammy Beaumont, Natalie Sciver, and Ireland's Gaby Lewis were also nominated for Women's T20I Player of the Year as part of the ICC Awards 2021.
In a year that saw India win only 2 of the 9 T20Is, Mandhana shined with the bat, amassing 255 runs in nine T20 matches at an average of 31.87 with two half-centuries in 2021.
She was India's top run-scorer in the T20I series against England with 119 runs. She was India's top scorer in both the T20Is that India lost, including a 51-ball 70 that went in vain in the final T20I.
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Meanwhile, Ireland's 20-year-old all-rounder Gaby Lewis had a stellar 2021 in the shortest format of the game, finishing as the second-highest run-scorer in T20Is with 325 runs, including one century and a half-century, at 40.62 in 10 T20Is with a strike rate of 128.45.
Lewis also scripted history at the ICC Women's T20 World Cup Europe Qualifier in August 2022 by becoming the first Irish female cricketer to score a T20I hundred.
On the other hand, England's women’s opener, Beaumont, was England's highest run-getter and third-highest overall in the world with 303 runs in 9 T20Is at an average of 33.66 with 3 half-centuries.
Another England player, Nat Sciver, an all-rounder, finished 2021 as England’s third-highest run-getter and wicket-taker in T20Is with 153 runs in 9 T20Is at an average of 19.12, with one fifty and 10 wickets at an average of 20.20, and an economy rate of 6.51 this year.
Notably, the ICC Awards 2021 will recognize the outstanding achievements and feats in cricket over the past year.
(With PTI Inputs)