Sydney, Feb 15 (.) Annabel Sutherland has become just the fifth woman to win consecutive Belinda Clark Awards, following a year where the star allrounder continued her dominance in the green and gold.
Sutherland was crowned Australia’s best women’s cricketer from the past year at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Saturday, polling 77 votes to win by three ahead of two-time winner Beth Mooney.
Conflicting schedules between the men’s and women’s teams have prevented the Australian Cricket Awards from being held in their traditional format this season, and Sutherland
accepted her award from Clark in somewhat unusual circumstances, with a presentation held
in the SCG Members’ Long Bar ahead of Australia’s training session on Saturday evening.
Sutherland also claimed the ODI Player of the Year award, while Beth Mooney took out the T20I Player of the Year award on a countback having tied with opening partner Georgia Voll.
Australia played just three T20Is in the voting period, and Mooney was named player of that series in New Zealand after scoring 166 runs at an average of 83 and strike-rate of 167.
It is the fourth time Mooney has won the T20I award since its inception in 2019, in a testament to her remarkable consistency with the bat in the shortest format.
The Aussies played 13 white-ball matches across the voting period – all of those away from home – with those three T20Is followed by 10 one-dayers in September and October encompassing the bilateral series in India and the ODI World Cup.
Sutherland, one of Australia’s most reliable players during the World Cup, was Australia’s leading wicket-taker in the 50-over format, finishing as the tournament’s second-highest wicket taker with 17 at 15.82 while contributing a high score of 98no against England.
Across all formats, Sutherland took 27 wickets at an average of 15.63 alongside 250 runs at an average of 41.66.
The Victorian is the fifth woman to win consecutive Belinda Clark Awards, after Karen Rolton (2002-03, 2005-06), Lisa Sthalekar (2007-08), Shelley Nitschke (2009-12) and Meg Lanning (2014-15).
“It’s pretty special to be alongside a few of those names … it’s pretty cool and very surreal at the moment,” Sutherland said.
“I’m super grateful to receive the award from ‘BC’ (Clark), and just grateful and nice to know that I’ve contributed to the team’s success over the last 12 months.”
The 24-year-old also conceded she had some conflicting feelings around the individual honour given the lingering disappointment of Australia’s World Cup semi-final defeat.
“It’s hard to go past the way the World Cup finished, in terms of where the team sat in the result we got there,” she added. “I put a lot of emphasis on that World Cup … and over the last couple of years that was the focus in my preparation, on how was I going to contribute to wins for Australia.
“I felt like I was able to do that with the ball throughout that tournament, and in bits with the bat too.
“But it’s a tough one to reflect on given the way the World Cup finished up.”
Mooney also shone at the ODI World Cup in India and Sri Lanka, pulling Australia out of deep trouble with a century against Pakistan and finishing the tournament as her team’s top run scorer.
Alana King, who took an Australian record 7-18 against South Africa, also enjoyed a stellar World Cup campaign to finish third in the voting for the Belinda Clark Award.
The awards for international cricket are based on votes from players, umpires and media on a 3-2-1 basis from each match.
Votes are weighted to decide the Belinda Clark Award winner, with those polled in Test matches worth twice as much as from ODI fixtures, and three times more than T20I votes.
If players are tied for first place, a countback occurs with the player who received the most ‘three votes’ getting the nod.
Australia did not play a Test in the 2026 voting period.
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