ICC Awards 2023: Suryakumar Yadav nominated for Men’s T20I Cricketer of the Year

Indian batter Suryakumar Yadav has been nominated for the ICC Men’s T20I Cricketer of the Year 2023 award while youngster Yashasvi Jaiswal is in the running for the ICC Men’s Emerging T20I Cricketer of the Year honour.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) announced the nominees for the ICC Awards 2023 in the T20 format on Wednesday.

The shortlist was drawn up by a specialist panel of cricket writers and broadcasters, who identified the star performers according to on-field performances and overall achievements in international cricket through the calendar year.

The final winners will be determined after a round of voting by the ICC Voting Academy, a larger panel of global media representatives, and global cricket fans later this month.

Suryakumar Yadav, who won the Men’s T20I Cricketer of the Year Award in 2022, will be gunning for back-to-back wins in the category.

The Indian batting dynamo enjoyed a sensational 2023 in T20Is, scoring 733 runs in 17 innings at an average of 48.86 and a blistering strike rate of 155.95. His tally included two centuries and five half-centuries.

Suryakumar also took up the captain’s mantle of the Indian men’s cricket team in the five-match T20 series at home against Australia in December and guided his team to a 4-1 win on his captaincy debut.

Zimbabwe’s Sikandar Raza, who was in the nominees list last year too, Ugandan sensation Alpesh Ramjani and New Zealand batter Mark Chapman are the other players nominated for the ICC Men’s T20I Cricketer of the Year 2023.

Meanwhile, the 22-year-old Yashasvi Jaiswal is in the four-man shortlist for the prestigious ICC Men’s Emerging Cricketer of the Year for 2023 award.

Jaiswal made his Test debut for India against West Indies this year and marked his maiden cap with a century. Jaiswal scored 288 runs in three Tests in 2023 at an average of 57.60.

The young gun also earned his maiden T20I cap for India in August last year and notched up an impressive 430 runs in 15 matches since then. Jaiswal was part of the Indian team that won the gold medal at the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou and even scored a century against Nepal in the quarter-finals.

Yashasvi Jaiswal finds himself in the illustrious company of Sri Lanka’s Dilshan Madushanka, South Africa’s Gerald Coetzee and Kiwi batting sensation Rachin Ravindra in the contest for the honour.

The shortlists for the Women’s Emerging Player of the Year and the Women’s T20I Player of the Year categories were also announced but no Indians feature in either list.