Australia cricket dominance knows no bounds as both players of the female international team wins ICC awards.
Australia’s Ellyse Perry and Alyssa Healy were awarded this year’s ICCs top honours. Meg Lanning was also named as captain of both the ODI and T20I teams for Australia’s women’s cricket teams. Australian all-rounder Perry won the Rachael Heyhoe-Flint Award for the ICC Women’s Cricketer of the Year and was also named as the ICC Women’s ODI Player of the Year.
Across all formats, Perry has had a stellar year. She scored three hundreds including one in the Women’s Ashes Test. She averaged 73.50 from 12 ODIs this year, where she has also taken 21 wickets, including a national record 7/22. She became the first player to complete 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in T20I cricket.
‘It’s an amazing honour and I’m a little bit shocked, given how many amazing performances there have been across the year’, she said in an interview. ‘It’s amazing to be acknowledged and I do truly appreciate it. It’s a really nice way to finish the year on a personal note’.
‘It’s been nice to have a chance to tour so consistently with the Australian team. It’s been an amazing year, I’ve really enjoyed all of it and it’s just been nice to be a part of it. It’s so exciting that the T20 World Cup is here at home early next year and with the target of the final at the MCG it could be a really special moment in the game’s history’.
She, along with opening partner Alyssa Healy, dominated the crease throughout 2019. Healy, named as the T20I cricketer of the year for the second consecutive time, scored a world record 148* off 61 balls against Sri Lanka back in October. Her score is the highest score by a woman in T20Is. She scored her half-century off just 25 balls, while she scored her first century off of 46 balls - the fastest century ever by an Australian man or woman.
‘I’m really pumped to be awarded the T20I Cricketer of the Year. The Australian women’s team had a fantastic 12-month period and we played some really consistent T20 cricket. Whilst the individual award is really nice for me personally, I think it was great to see our team play so well throughout that 12-month period, especially leading into a home World Cup in 2020’.
Both players were also named in the Women’s ODI and T20I teams of the year alongside Meg Lanning. ‘It’s a huge honour to be named captain of the ICC ODI and T20 Teams of the Year alongside some incredible players’, said Lanning. ‘A home T20 World Cup is an opportunity that doesn’t come along often, but we are looking forward to and embracing the challenge of performing well in front of our home crowd’.
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