ESPNcricinfo Awards

ESPNcricinfo Awards 2019 Women's batting nominees: Aussies ahoy

Three of our five women's batting nominees are big-hitting Aussies

Annesha Ghosh
Annesha Ghosh
16-Jan-2020
Alyssa Healy now holds the record for the highest score in a women's T20I  •  Getty Images

Alyssa Healy now holds the record for the highest score in a women's T20I  •  Getty Images

Aliya Riaz
71 v South Africa
third ODI, Benoni

A tie in a series decider, but for Pakistan, ranked lower than South Africa, it was on par with a win. Riaz's ODI average of 12.88 before this game was a far from faithful testament of her potential as a middle-order bat. Here she struck a career-best 71, adding 74 with Javeria Khan and another 84 with the lower order before falling in the 48th over. That left Pakistan needing 17 from 14 balls, and they very nearly got there.
Ellyse Perry
116 v England
only Test, Taunton

Eight women's Tests were played in the 2010s. Perry played in six of those and averaged 114.60 with the bat on the back of two hundreds. If the 213 not out in the 2017 Ashes was about the game's finest allrounder getting a long overdue maiden international hundred, the dogged 116 here, constructed over five and three quarter hours, spoke of the consistency that went towards fetching her her second ICC Women's Cricketer of the Year award. Her progress through the 90s was glacial and she got to her hundred off an overthrow, but on the whole she married timing with immaculate placement, and there was an inevitability about the century.
Meg Lanning
133 not out v England
first T20I, Chelmsford

Seventeen fours and seven sixes in 79 minutes of mayhem led to a new highest score in women's T20Is at the time. Lanning bested her own unbeaten 126 from 2015 while sending England to their biggest defeat in the format. Reprieved on 85, she bludgeoned 20 off Anya Shrubsole three overs later. Her otherworldly control was never more evident than in the six that took her to 100, off 51 balls: a shuffle outside off, a gentle crack of the wrists and off sailed the length ball on the fifth stump over the midwicket rope.
Alyssa Healy
148 not out v Sri Lanka
third T20I, Sydney

Lanning's record for the highest individual score in women's T20Is was broken two months later by her team-mate Healy, who hit 19 fours and seven sixes in her unbeaten 148. The ICC Women's T20I Player of the Year delivered a masterclass in straight driving, lofting and drilling spinners and fast bowlers along the ground, reaching her century off 46 deliveries, the second-fastest in women's T20Is. It was fitting that Lanning was at the non-striker's end as Healy carted 4, 4, 4 and 6 in four consecutive legal deliveries in the 28-run penultimate over, the last stroke hoisting her to the new individual record.
Stafanie Taylor
94 v India
first ODI, North Sound

An airborne Harmanpreet Kaur's one-handed boundary catch on the last ball of the innings denied Taylor a hundred, but her 94 against a full-strength India attack gave West Indies a one-run victory and two important championship points. Striking at 103.29, Taylor steered a vital 78-run stand with Chedean Nation that lifted West Indies to 225. Taylor took the aerial route at will on both sides of the wicket to score 44 off her last 22 balls, playing sweeps and cuts against the spinners in particular.
Click here for the women's bowling nominees and here for ESPNcricinfo Awards 2019 home

Annesha Ghosh is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo