NEW DELHI: India off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, England captain Joe Root, and West Indies batsman Kyle Mayers are on the shortlist for the International Cricket Council's (ICC) Player of the Month award for February. England's Tammy Beaumont and Natalie Sciver and New Zealand's Brooke Halliday are on the list for the women's player of the month.
Ashwin, 34, has been in stellar form since India's Test calendar restarted with their tour of Australia. He played a crucial role with both bat and ball as India won the series 2-1, which included them becoming the first team since 1988 to beat Australia in a Test match at the Gabba in Brisbane.
England captain Joe Root scored three back-to-back Test centuries against Sri Lanka and India, two of which were double hundreds. He has scored a total of 333 runs and took 6 wickets overall in the 3 Tests that he played against India.
Mayers scored an extraordinary unbeaten 210 in the fourth innings of his debut Test to lead West Indies to a record chase of 395 in their first Test against Bangladesh.
Beaumont's unbeaten 72 helped England to a comfortable seven-wicket win against New Zealand. She played three ODIs and scored a century in each of these against New Zealand, totaling 231 runs. Halliday of New Zealand also played three ODIs against England and scored a total of 110 runs and took a total of 2 wickets in these games. Sciver was the leading wicket-taker in the ODI series between New Zealand and England and added an innings of 63 in the second match that England won. IANS