ICC Player Of The Month August 2026: Dinusha And Barnett Win

Sonal Dinusha and Lucy Barnett have won the ICC Player of the Month awards for August 2026. The ICC announced both winners on Thursday. Dinusha took the men's award for a run of scores against India that included three centuries. Barnett becomes the first Isle of Man cricketer to win either award.

The pairing is an odd one on paper. One winner made his runs in World Test Championship cricket against a full-strength India. The other made hers at a regional T20 tournament in Romania. Both were scoring at a rate few matched anywhere in August.

Dinusha's four innings against India

The Sri Lankan batter played two Tests in the series. He passed fifty in all four innings.

• Galle, first Test: 100 and 84
• Colombo, Sinhalese Sports Club, second Test: 103 and 133 not out

That comes to 420 runs across the series. ANI put his average at 140, with three hundreds and one fifty. He was dismissed three times in four visits to the crease. Sri Lanka drew the Colombo Test after following on.

The follow-on record

The Colombo innings carried the rarer distinction. According to the ICC, Dinusha is only the third batter to score a century in each innings after his side was asked to follow on. The award citation named that feat directly.

His career is four Tests old at the point of winning. ANI reported he had played three Tests before this series began. A player of the month award landing that early is uncommon. Most winners arrive with a body of work behind them. Dinusha arrived with one series.

Barnett's Continental Cup summer

Barnett's tournament was the Continental Cup T20I, played in Ilfov County, Romania. She made 257 runs in four matches. The ICC put her average at 128.5 and her strike rate at 178.47. Her highest score was 123 not out from 64 balls against Norway. She also took four wickets with off-spin.

The Isle of Man reached the final. Manx Radio reported they finished runners-up to Turkey, and that Barnett is 19. Her side is ranked 38th. No Isle of Man player had won an ICC Player of the Month award before this one.

The nominees and the vote

Ollie Robinson of England and Bangladesh's Hasan Mahmud were the other men's nominees. Robinson has since moved to a career-best third in the ICC Men's Test Bowling Rankings. Thailand's Suleeporn Laomi and Nannapat Koncharoenkai completed the women's shortlist.

Voting runs through registered fans at icc-cricket.com alongside a specialist panel of former internationals and media representatives. The ICC said fan votes proved decisive in the women's category. For an associate player from a 38th-ranked side, that mechanism is the one that makes the award reachable at all.