Steve Smith Wins 3rd Allan Border Medal As Cricket Australia Announces Awards For The Year

Australian batsman Steve Smith edged out Pat Cummins to win the Allan Border medal denoting Australia’s men’s Cricketer of The Year at the Australian Cricket Awards. Steve Smith has bagged the award twice before in 2015 and 2018 and this will be his third Allan Border Medal. Smith scored a century in the Sydney Test against India in the recently-concluded Border Gavaskar series to regain form and finished as the second-highest run-getter in the series.

Steve Smith has managed to score 1098 runs at an average of 45.75 during the voting period from January 9, 2020, to January 19, 2021, across the three formats. He smashed four hundred during the period alongside four fifties and was the highest run-scorer for Australia in all formats for the year. Pat Cummins and Ashton Agar won the Test and T20 Player of The Year awards respectively while Smith was the ODI Player of The Year.

Beth Mooney Bags Her First Belinda Clark Award

Australian women’s cricketer Beth Mooney scraped past captain Meg Lanning to win the Belinda Clark Award denoting the women’s cricketer of the year. She had scored 555 runs at an average of 42.69 in the voting period while the skipper Meg Lanning fell short just by 2 votes. Meg Lanning had scored 442 runs overall at an average of 49.11 but wasn’t enough to bag the award.

Beth Mooney had an excellent year as she was the highest run-getter for Australia with 259 runs in the Women’s T20 World cup and she helped Australia win the final over India with an unbeaten 78. She was also the first player other than Ellyse Perry, Meg Lanning, and Alyssa Healy to bag the Belinda Clark Award since 2013. The women’s ODI player of the year award went to Rachael Haynes while Elyse Villani won the women’s domestic player of the year.

2021 Australian Cricket Awards Recipients

Allan Border Medal – Steve Smith
Belinda Clark Award – Beth Mooney
Men’s Test Player of the Year – Pat Cummins
Men’s ODI Player of the Year – Steve Smith
Men’s T20I Player of the Year – Ashton Agar
Women’s ODI Player of the Year – Rachael Haynes
Women’s T20I Player of the Year – Beth Mooney
Community Impact Award – Josh Lalor
Men’s Domestic Player of the Year – Shaun Marsh
Bradman Young Cricketer of the Year – Will Sutherland
Women’s Domestic Player of the Year – Elyse Villani
Betty Wilson Young Cricketer of the Year – Hannah Darlington
Australian Cricket Hall of Fame – Johnny Mullagh, Merv Hughes, and Lisa Sthalekar

Johnny Mullagh, Merv Hughes, and Lisa Sthalekar have all been inducted into the Australian cricket hall of fame after their services to Australian cricket over the years.