Lagatar 24 Desk
New Delhi, Feb 7: In recognition of their outstanding performances in January, bowler Mohammed Siraj and opener Shubman Gill were nominated on Tuesday for the ICC Player of the Month Award. The third candidate for the award is Devon Conway of New Zealand, who has had a strong start to the year with three hundreds and two fifties across formats.
Following a successful 2022, Gill demonstrated his batting abilities in both white-ball forms last month, while Siraj distinguished himself as India’s fast-bowling attack in recent ODIs, demonstrating his brilliance on a regular basis, notably with the new ball in Jasprit Bumrah’s absence.
Gill received his first T20I call-up in Mumbai’s first game against Sri Lanka, where he scored just seven runs, followed by another score of under ten runs in the second match. In Rajkot’s third T20I, he scored a solid 46.
In the subsequent three one-day internationals against the island nation, Gill scored 70, 21 and 116 runs, but it was his stunning performance in the opening ODI against New Zealand in Hyderabad that truly stole the show.
The 23-year-old scored an astounding 208 runs off 149 balls on a day when none of his teammates reached 28.
With three successive sixes off Lockie Ferguson, Gill reached 200 and became the ODI’s youngest player to do so.
After that, he followed it up with scores of 40 not out and 112 in his next two appearances, bringing his series total to 360, which tied Babar Azam’s record against the West Indies in 2016–17 as the joint-highest in a three-match ODI series.
On the other side, Siraj’s outstanding play was recognised in the ICC Men’s Player Rankings, where he was named the top bowler in ODIs.
In a high-scoring first ODI match against Sri Lanka in Guwahati, he returned with numbers of 2/30 from seven overs. He followed it up with figures of 3/30 and 4/32 in his subsequent two appearances, respectively, to end as the series’ top wicket-taker.
In a high-scoring thriller against New Zealand in his home stadium in Hyderabad, the right-arm quick went on to take 4/46 from 10 overs, and in the second ODI in Raipur, he returned a remarkable 6-1-10-1 in a magnificent opening burst.
