Cummins, Healy win Oz awards

MELBOURNE: Fast bowler Pat Cummins won Australian cricket’s highest individual honour on Monday for his performances during a year when the national team’s results were overshadowed by bans for Steve Smith and David Warner following a balltampering scandal.

Cummins won the Allan Border medal for Australia’s leading men’s cricketer with 156 votes, six ahead of off-spinner Nathan Lyon, who was voted Test cricket Player of the Year.

Alyssa Healy won the Belinda Clark award for the leading Australian Women’s Cricketer of the Year. Healy won the top women’s have been happy with my form. Sometimes the team doesn’t do well (against India), and it can affect your performance as well. I am sure it did in some respect, but it was nice to have couple of contributions.

How tough is it to maintain form leading to a World Cup?

Well, there is a World Cup every four years, so you want to have a big push towards that. I have put emphasis on my game. It will probably be my last World Cup so I want to do as well as possible.

Your thoughts on the changed World Cup format?

I am very excited about this World Cup format. In bilateral ODIS, teams can figure you out but in a World Cup like this, you are playing a different team each day, so you can be on top of your game. There are no minnows really, so every game will be a good one. In the previous formats, sometimes you played a tough team award with the One-day International and Twenty20 honours. She was voted player of the tournament when Australia won the women’s Twenty20 World Cup in the Caribbean last year.

Alyssa is Australia paceman Mitchell Starc’s wife and also the niece of former Australia wicketkeeper Ian Healy.

Cummins took 44 wickets at an average of 25.61 across all formats during the 12-month voting period, which did not include his man-of-the-series performance in the recent win over Sri Lanka.

The 25-year-old Cummins, who took seven wickets on his Test debut as a teenager against South Africa in 2011 but didn’t play another Test match until 2017, has moved to No. 2 in the rankings for bowlers.

He struggled with back injuries after making his international debut but since returning against India in 2017 has been a regular in the Australian Test lineup. Cummins won maximum votes in the Cape Town Test last March, which was overshadowed by the ball-tampering scandal.

ALYSSA HEALY, WHO WAS VOTED PLAYER OF THE WORLD T20, WON THE BELINDA CLARK AWARD FOR THE LEADING AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S CRICKETER OF THE YEAR