Poonam Yadav, Shafali Verma win big at BCCI Awards

Poonam Yadav was awarded the ‘Best International Cricketer of the Year – Women’ by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) while Shafali Verma was recognised both for her performances in domestic cricket at the junior level as well as her notable returns at the international level in the BCCI Awards 2018-19 on Sunday (January 12).

Yadav was recognised for the stupendous year she had, where she picked 14 wickets in eight ODIs and 20 wickets in 15 T20Is. The leg-spinner also received the Arjuna Award earlier in the year.

Verma made her international debut against South Africa in September 2019 but hogged limelight when she broke Sachin Tendulkar’s record by becoming the youngest Indian to hit a half century in international cricket, when she did so in a T20I against West Indies. She was also awarded with the Jagmohan Dalmiya Trophy for the best women’s cricketer (junior domestic) award for scoring close to 2000 runs in 2018-19 including seven centuries and five half centuries.

Another Jagmohan Dalmiya Trophy winner was Deepti Sharma in the senior domestic cricketers’ category for scoring close to 500 runs in the 11 games she played. Her performances helped Bengal topple Railways to lift the Senior inter-state one-day trophy. Sharma, who also had a memorable year in international cricket, made her first appearance in an overseas league – the Women’s Cricket Super League – where she turned out for Western Storm.

Smriti Mandhana and Jhulan Goswami were rewarded for being the highest run-getter and highest wicket-taker respectively in ODIs during the aforementioned period. While Mandhana scored 349 runs in six games at an average of close to 70, Goswami picked up 11 wickets at an average of 16.36 in as many matches.

Meanwhile, Anjum Chopra was conferred with the Lifetime Achievement Award for Women for her contribution to Indian cricket.

“We wanted to make Naman bigger and better and have introduced four new categories – highest run-getter and wicket-takers in WODIs and best international debut men and women – from this year,” said Jay Shah, secretary of BCCI.

“The BCCI Awards is our way of recognizing the finest on-field performances right from the age group to senior level and also honour our legends,” said Sourav Ganguly, the President of the BCCI.