Smriti Mandhana, Laura Wolvaardt and Ash Gardner - three of the top performers at the Women's World Cup 2025 were nominated for the ICC Women's Player of the Month award for October. Wolvaardt, the leading run-getter of the tournament, scored 470 out of her record-breaking 571 runs in October, with the final being the only game in November. Wolvaardt finished October with a blast, smashing a marathon 169 in the semi-final against England to take her side to the final.
Wolvaardt was coming off scores of 70, 61* and 90 into the semis and is safely the top contender to win the award. Smriti Mandhana had a slow start to her campaign but got better, scoring 80 and 88 against Australia and England, and then followed it up with a masterful century against New Zealand in Navi Mumbai. Mandhana stayed in good touch until the end of the month, getting India off to good starts against Bangladesh and Australia.
Gardner, on the other hand, is another strong nominee, having scored a couple of centuries during the tournament and also took seven wickets with the ball, very key and big scalps. Deepti Sharma had an outside chance, but her big performance came in November in the final, where she scored a fifty as well as picked up a fifer.
No Indian nominated among the men
Senuran Muthusamy, the South African left-arm spinner, Noman Ali, the Pakistan spinner and Rashid Khan, Afghanistan's T20 spinner and his side's lead spinner in white-ball cricket all got the nomination. Muthusamy was the Player of the Series in the two-match Test series against Pakistan, registering his best-ever match figures of 11/174 in the series opener in Lahore and then backing it up with the bat, scoring his career-best 89 in the second to help his side draw the series in the decider.
Noman, on the other hand, picked up 14 wickets for the series, including a 10-fer in the series opener in Lahore, playing a key role in Pakistan winning the first Test. That was his third 10-wicket match haul in Test cricket. On the other hand, Rashid Khan, the Afghan spin supremo, bagged 20 wickets in the month of October, including nine in five T20Is and 11 in three ODIs against Bangladesh. 5/17 was his best figures in the second ODI as Rashid played a key role in Afghanistan's whitewash of Bangladesh in the ODIs.