Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Two Pakistan stars and an up-and-coming 17-year-old have been nominated for ICC Women’s Player of the Month for May 2022, the International Cricket Council (ICC) said on Monday.

Pakistan’s Tuba Hassan took to the international stage like fish to water. In her very first outing on the international stage, against Sri Lanka, she took home the Player of the Series award after finishing as her side’s highest wicket-taker.

It was a dream debut for Tuba, who took home the Player of the Match in the first T20I. She struck off the second ball of her first over to Anushka Sanjeewani and scalped Anushka Sanjeewani and Kavisha Dilhari thereafter to finish with magical figures of 3/8 on debut.

Skipper Bismah Maroof led from the front in the T20I series and finished as the highest run-getter with 65 runs in three matches.

In all three games, she walked out when her team was in a spot of bother. In the first match, her patient 28 off 32 balls took Pakistan to a touching distance of a win. In the remaining two matches, she ensured she batted through till the end to guide her team home.

In the second game, she played the perfect second fiddle to Ayesha Naseem with a 29-ball 22*. In the final match, Maroof took her team home in a crunch encounter with a brace off the final ball. Though she only scored 15* off 15, she won the Player of the Match for her crucial innings.

Like Tuba Hassan, Trinity Smith of Jersey too made her debut last month and already finds herself on the shortlist for ICC Women’s Player of the Month.

The 17-year-old all-rounder made her debut against France in the quadrangular series that also involved Spain and Austria. She didn’t get a chance to bat but picked up a wicket on debut.

In the first opportunity she got to bat, she scored 59* off just 43 balls and later picked up 2/18 in four overs with her right-arm medium pace. In Jersey’s final game of the series, she smashed yet another fifty (56* of 40 balls) and also picked up a wicket. Jersey finished the series unbeaten with four wins out of four.

Smith played a crucial role in it, with 120 runs at a strike rate of 136.36 with the bat and also picked four wickets in as many games at an economy of 6.58.