The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Wednesday (December 28) announced the shortlisted candidates for the Women’s Emerging Cricketer of the Year award for 2022.

India’s Renuka Singh and Yastika Bhatia are the two nominees for the prestigious honour. Australia’s Darcie Brown and England’s Alice Capsey also feature in the list.

Renuka, the right-arm pacer, impressed one and all with her exploits in 2022, claiming 40 wickets for her country in 29 games across the two white-ball formats.

In particular, Renuka left her mark in ODIs, picking 18 wickets at an average of just 14.88, of which eight came in two appearances against England and seven in India’s series with Sri Lanka.

Renuka also played an instrumental role as India won the Silver Medal in the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and clinched the Women’s Asia Cup earlier this year. She bagged 17 wickets in 11 matches at an economy of just 5.21 across the two showpiece events.

Talking about Yastika, she amassed 376 runs in ODIs this year at an average of 25.06 and also featured in the 2022 50-over World Cup in New Zealand. In T20Is this year, she scored 49 runs at a strike rate of 80.32.

Making headlines as an England debutant at just 17 years of age, Alice Capsey scored 234 runs in T20Is at an average of 33.42 and an impressive strike rate of 127.86. She recently became just the second player to hit a half-century for England as a teenager, joining the great Sarah Taylor.

As far as Australia’s Darcie Brown is concerned – she took 24 wickets this year across formats and has been a key part of their bowling line-up in white-ball cricket.

During Australia’s Women’s ODI World Cup-winning campaign earlier this year, she claimed two three-wicket hauls against New Zealand and India. She was also part of Australia’s Gold Medal triumph at the Commonwealth Games.

(With ICC inputs)