The ICC announced its September awards on Tuesday, and both went to India. Shubman Gill took the men’s honour, Shafali Verma the women’s, and the ICC Player of the Month double landed in the same dressing room for the third time in the award’s history.
Start with Guwahati. West Indies had just posted 405, and India needed 406 to win the second ODI. That is the kind of target teams used to treat as a formality for the side batting first. Gill treated it as a personal errand. He finished on an unbeaten 223 off 133 balls, and India got home with eight wickets and 39 balls to spare.
Three days earlier in Thiruvananthapuram, he had made 110 off 108 as India chased 296. Two innings, two chases, two wins. September, in the end, was not a contest.
The innings that settled the ICC Player of the Month race
The Guwahati knock rewrote three lines of the record book in one evening, per the Indian Express. The double century came off 117 balls, the fastest in ODI history. The 223 not out is the highest individual score in a successful ODI chase. And the century off 62 balls was the fastest by an Indian captain in the format.
There was a partnership in there too. Gill and Rohit Sharma put on 255 for the first wicket, with Rohit making 101 off 75, the highest opening stand India has managed at home, per the same report.
Gill beat two other nominees, his own teammate Abhishek Sharma and Zimbabwe’s Sikandar Raza. It is his fifth monthly award, after January 2023, September 2023, February 2025 and July 2025. That puts him level with West Indies captain Hayley Matthews, who also has five, the most by any player.
“It feels fantastic to win my fifth ICC Player of the Month award,” Gill told the ICC. He added that scoring the runs in front of home fans made it more special, and that with the Men’s Cricket World Cup in southern Africa next year, India are determined to keep raising their standards.
Shafali’s September was a two-trophy month
Shafali Verma did not have one big night. She had a whole month of them. At the Women’s Asia Cup in the UAE, she scored 236 runs in five innings. Then at the Asian Games in Nagoya, she added 188 in three matches as India took gold, per Sportstar. India won both tournaments, and Shafali was central to both.
This is her second monthly award. Her first came in November 2025, after her decisive performance in the Women’s World Cup final against South Africa, per CricTracker.
“It is an incredible honour to win the ICC Player of the Month award again,” Shafali said, adding that playing her part in the Asia Cup and Asian Games triumphs made the award more special.
Why this double actually matters
This is the fifth time players from the same country have swept both monthly awards, and the third time India has done it. Jasprit Bumrah and Smriti Mandhana shared the honours in June 2024. Abhishek Sharma and Mandhana repeated it in September 2025. Now Gill and Shafali.
Here is the detail that makes this one different from the others. Gill won his award for ODI cricket, yet he is not even in the T20I side playing West Indies in Hyderabad on Wednesday night. That team is captained by Shreyas Iyer, and Gill’s name is nowhere in its squad list. India’s white-ball setup has split into two teams with two leaders, and both are winning. That is a depth problem most countries would love to have, and it is the quiet story behind this double.
September will be remembered for the 406 chase, and fairly so. But the longer story is what Gill himself pointed to: a World Cup build-up that now has a form player at the top of the order and a women’s side collecting trophies in pairs. If this is the baseline, the next twelve months could be loud.