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Cricket

15-yr-old Shafali Verma wins BCCI award for best international debut

15-yr-old Shafali Verma wins BCCI award for best international debut
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By

Shruti Banerjee

Published: 12 Jan 2020 11:02 AM GMT

Young sensation Shafali Verma wins a couple of awards for her outstanding performances in domestic cricket at the junior level. Along with this, she earned the best international debutant among women in the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) Awards 2018-19 on Sunday (January 12).

Veteran leg-spinner Poonam Yadav was awarded the 'Best International Cricketer of the Year – Women' by the BCCI for her exceptional bowling. She bagged 14 wickets in eight ODIs and 20 wickets in 15 T20Is last year. Moreover, she was also given the Arjuna Award last year.

Shafali Verma, on the other hand, made her international debut against South Africa in September last year. Soon after her debut, she made the headlines when she broke batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar’s record by becoming the youngest Indian to hit a half-century in international cricket. Her record came in a T20I match against West Indies. After that, she impressed everyone with her fearless approach while playing for India A in Australia and later in the T20 Challenger Trophy. She was even the leading run-getter in the tournament.

Verma was also awarded the Jagmohan Dalmiya Trophy for the best women’s cricketer (junior domestic) award for scoring nearly 2000 runs in the 2018-19 season. Her runs included seven centuries and five half-centuries as well. Alongside her, Deepti Sharma also won Jagmohan Dalmiya Trophy in the senior domestic cricketers’ category. She scored near to 500 runs in the 11 matches. Apart from that, she had a great international outing and she also played in the Women’s Cricket Super League.

Deepti Sharma (Image source: ICC Cricket)

India opener Smriti Mandhana and stalwart Jhulan Goswami also received the awards. While Mandhana awarded the highest run-getter, Goswami won the highest wicket-taker award respectively in ODIs. Mandhana scored 349 runs in six matches which came at an average of near 70. Goswami bagged 11 wickets at an average of 16.36 in six matches as well.

Apart from these, former India captain Anjum Chopra was also awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for Women. She was the first Indian to play 100 Women ODIs as well.

While speaking on the award, BCCI President Sourav Ganguly said: "The BCCI Awards is our way of recognizing the finest on-field performances right from the age group to senior level and also honour our legends. It will be a special evening in Mumbai as we will also have the 7th MAK Pataudi lecture and I am delighted to inform that it will be Virender Sehwag, who will address the gathering."

Jay Shah, Hon. Secretary, BCCI shared: "The BCCI Awards are an important feature in India's cricketing calendar, a mélange of aspiration and inspiration. We wanted to make it bigger and better and have introduced four new categories - highest run-getter and wicket-takers in WODIs and best international debut men and women - from this year. A total of 25 awards will be presented."

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