Indian Woman Batter Smriti Mandhana Honoured with ICC Women's Cricketer of the Year 2021

By: WE Staff | Monday, 24 January 2022

Smriti Mandhana has been awarded the Rachael Heyhoe-Flint Trophy as the ICC Women's Cricketer of the Year 2021. She is just the second player, after Ellyse Perry of Australia, to achieve top individual award in the women's overall category three times at the annual ICC awards.

Mandhana was also nominated for the Women's T20I Player of the Year award, but it went to England's Tammy Beaumont. On the other side, Mandhana was named to the ICC Women's T20I Team of the Year.

Mandhana, who was crowned ICC Women's Cricketer of the Year and ODI Cricketer of the Year in 2018, won the award ahead of fellow openers Beaumont, Lizelle Lee of South Africa, and Gaby Lewis of Ireland. Jhulan Goswami is the only other Indian woman to have won an ICC annual award, which she received in 2007.

Mandhana has scored 855 runs in 22 international matches across three series in 2021, since India's return to the field on March 7 after a 364-day absence from the international scene - primarily due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but also due to the BCCI's inability to schedule games for them even as the Indian men's team got its share of fixtures - at an average of 38.86, hitting one century and five half-centuries along the way. The highlight of her run tally was a Player-of-the-Match-winning maiden century in the longest format - 127 against Australia at Gold Coast in India's first women's day-night Test.

Mandhana was the leading run scorer in women's ODIs last year, with 669 runs at an average of 66.90, and third in T20Is, with 622 runs at a strike rate of 130.67.

The ICC Women's Cricketer of the Year award, which was established in 2006, was reintroduced in 2017 and named after Rachael Heyhoe-Flint, a former England Women's Test cricketer and administrator. Perry was named ICC Women's Player of the Decade in 2020, having already won the accolade in 2017 and 2019.