The rise and rise of the Southern Stars and women’s cricket in Australia will be reflected in tonight’s Allan Border Medal.
For the first time, the country’s female cricketers will be vying for three awards — the Belinda Clark Award for most outstanding player, the domestic player of the year and the Betty Wilson Young Cricketer of the Year.
The Belinda Clark award has, since 2002, been the only award for female cricketers to contend for at the annual event, but this year they will have greater representation.
“For each major initiative tailored towards increasing the appeal of cricket to women and girls, such as the Big Bash League, the WBBL and more recently with the Growing Cricket For Girls Fund, there are countless seen and unseen changes Australian cricket is taking to ensure cricket a sport for all,” Sarah Styles, Cricket Australia’s head of female engagement, said.
“These new awards are another example of this.”
Female participation rates grew 9 per cent in 2016 as the game continued to expand, with new TV deals and greater funding bringing the women’s game to a wider audience.
2016 winner Ellyse Perry and captain Meg Lanning are among the favourites for the Belinda Clark Award, which has undergone a redesign to ensure the award “has its own identity”.
Lanning is also well in the running to win the domestic award having scored nearly 200 runs more than the next comer across National Cricket League and Women’s Big Bash League games.
The Betty Wilson award will go to a player who was aged 24 or younger at the start of the voting period in December 2015, and had played 10 matches or fewer at the time — Georgia Redmayne, Maisy Gibson and Sophie Molineux are among the frontrunners.
Steve Smith and Mitchell Starc are the favourites to sweep the main men’s awards.
This post originally appeared on ABC News.
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