ICC Player of the Month | Shreyas Iyer, Mithali Raj, Deepti Sharma among Indians nominated for February

The Indian Cricket Council (ICC) announced the nominees for Player of the Month for February. India’s star middle-order batter Shreyas Iyer has been included in the list among men, while India’s women ODI captain Mithali Raj, and all-rounder Deepti Sharma have been selected among men.

Shreyas had an extraordinary run in the recently concluded three-match T20I series against Sri Lanka, where he got the opportunity to bat at No.3 in the home T20I series in the absence of Virat Kohli. He batted remarkably well, scoring 204 runs in three games at a strike rate of 174.35 without losing his wicket, and was fittingly adjudged the Player of the Series.

Apart from Shreyas, UAE’s Vriitya Aravind and Nepal’s Dipendra Singh Airee were the ones who have made the cut. 

Vriitya played a major role in his team’s entry in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2022 with an impressive performance in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Qualifier A. In the five games in Qualifier A, Vriitya aggregated 267 runs at a strike rate of 154.33, averaging 89. Dipendra Singh Airee, on the other hand, scored 159 runs and took three wickets for his country in the same campaign.

Mithali Raj and Deepti Sharma were the two Indians in the women’s category. New Zealand’s Amelia Kerr, who made 353 runs at an average of 117.66 and took seven wickets  at an economy of 5.78 in the recently concluded multi-format series against India, was the other one who got a place. 

Raj, meanwhile, scored 232 runs in the same series, including three fifties, averaging 77.33 while maintaining the strike rate at 82.56. Sharma, on the other hand, bagged 10 wickets in the series, and also amassed 116 runs in five matches.