Annabel Sutherland has pinched the Belinda Clark Award for a second straight year, sliding past Beth Mooney 77 votes to 74 in what was always going to be a World-Cup-shaped countback.
The award window was narrow: nine one-dayers at last year’s ODI World Cup, a three-match T20I series in New Zealand last March and three 50-over games in India on the eve of the tournament—nothing else counted. Within that frame Sutherland’s numbers stacked up neatly: 216 runs at 43.20, a highest of 98* against England, and 19 wickets at 18.84. She added eight more wickets in the T20Is across the ditch.
“It’s pretty special to be alongside a few of those names,” she said after receiving the trophy from Belinda Clark herself. “I think it’s pretty cool and very surreal at the moment.”
Pressed on whether she had expected to win, the 22-year-old shook her head. “I was pretty surprised to be honest. I hadn’t put much thought into it around who was going to win. [An] absolutely special feeling and super grateful to receive the award from BC.”
Only Meg Lanning (2014-15), Karen Rolton, Lisa Sthalekar and current coach Shelly Nitschke—who strung four together from 2009 to 2012—have managed back-to-back Clark gongs. A tight club, then, and Sutherland has barged her way in early.
Mooney did not leave empty-handed. Her 166 runs at 83.00 in New Zealand secured the T20I Player of the Year plaque. Leg-spinner Alana King, third overall, finished the World Cup with 13 wickets, headlined by a record 7 for 18 against South Africa—numbers that would have taken top billing in most other seasons.
Domestic recognition had filtered out earlier: Nicola Carey as Female Domestic Player of the Year, and teenager Caoimhe Bray lifting the Betty Wilson Young Cricketer award.
Usually CA rolls out the blue carpet for a joint men’s and women’s ceremony, yet touring calendars killed the idea again. Sutherland accepted her prize in a team-room presentation; the Allan Border Medal and other men’s awards will be revealed once the national squads finally overlap. “It looked different [but] still special obviously to have [Belinda Clark] there and do it in front of the team, most importantly,” Sutherland noted. “It’d be nice to get the whole of the Australian cricket world together to be able to celebrate, but it wasn’t to be this year.”
Away from the current squad, former skipper Alex Blackwell has entered the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame. Blackwell’s career ran from 2003 to 2018: 251 internationals, 3492 ODI runs at 36.00, a pair of World Cup medals (2005, 2013) and the small matter of captaining Australia to their first T20 crown in 2010. A timely nod to a player who kept the door open for the likes of Sutherland to walk through.
All told, back-to-back national awards for a 22-year-old all-rounder underline why selectors keep chucking her the ball and the batting order keeps inching her upwards. The numbers may cool off eventually; the confidence gathered from nights like this tends to stick around.
