The International Cricket Council on Wednesday announced the nominations for player of the month for April & it was not much of a surprise when it included Nepalese Cricketer Kushal Bhurtel in it. He is a young name in the cricket world from a team which has not made any remarks in international cricket.
The list also included Pakistan skipper Babar Azam & Fakhar Zaman following their impressive performance in limited over series against South Africa. It was only last month when Babar Azam was numro uno in the list of batsman ranking the ICC ODI player rankings, which ended the long rule of Indian skipper Virat Kohli.
Nepal’s Kushal was the top scorer as his team won the tri series against Netherlands & Malaysia. HIs contribution to the series was 278, which included four half-centuries in five matches. Babar, on the other hand played a match winning innings (82 of 94 balls) against South Africa which gave him 13 ints to make it a total of 865 points which is his career’s best. Not just that, he also contributed 122 of 59 balls in Pakistan’s chase in the third T20 against the same opposition.
His partner, Fakhar, also produced a brilliant performance in the ODI series by scoring two centuries which led to Pakistan’s victory against South Africa.
In Women’s cricket, It was Australia who shined through the list as all three women players are from Australian cricket team. Alyssa Healy, Leigh Kasperek, Megan Schutt gave a stunning performance in the ODI series against New Zealand & made their mark.
This time, in the list, Indian cricketers were not featured for the first time as none of them matched the criteria.