Pakistan wicket keeper-batter Mohammad Rizwan and women cricket team’s Nida Dar have been nominated for the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) T20 international player of the year award.
The ICC issued on Thursday the list of nominees for both male and female cricketers’ categories for the award.
In the men’s section, the other three nominees are India’s Suryakumar Yadav, England’s Sam Surran and Zimbabwe’s Sikander Raza.
Rizwan was also crowned the T20I cricketer of the year by the ICC in 2021.
The right-handed batter scored 996 runs and took nine catches and three stumpings in 25 T20I matches in 2022. He continued his brilliant run from his record-breaking year in T20Is in 2021 and played an anchor role for the Pakistan T20 team. Only Suryakumar Yadav scored more runs than Rizwan in the year in men’s T20Is.
Rizwan hit ten half-centuries in the year in T20Is and finished with 175 runs in the T20 World Cup, the joint-most by a Pakistan batter. Averaging 45.27 in T20Is in 2022, Rizwan enhanced his reputation as a high-quality anchor at the top of Pakistan’s batting line-up.
Aside from Nida Dar, the women nominees are India’s Smriti Mandhana, New Zealand’s Sophie Devine and Australia’s Tahlia McGrath.
Nida Dar made 396 runs in 16 matches at an average of 56.57, and 15 wickets.
Dar is the first and the only Pakistan bowler to have claimed 100 T20I wickets, and currently, the second-highest wicket-taker in Women’s T20Is, according to the ICC.
But she also impressed with the bat. She struck three fifty-plus scores this year: an unbeaten fifty at the Commonwealth Games, similar exploits against India at the Asia Cup, and a well-made 61 at home against Ireland in November.
