UAE’s Esha Oza lands ICC’s Associate Cricketer of the Year award for second time after dominant 2024

Esha Oza says she was lost for words after finding out she had been named the Women’s Associate Cricketer of the Year for a second time.

The national team captain won the award for her excellence across 2024, when she hit the third highest number of runs of any batter in women’s T20I cricket.

In the process, she helped establish the UAE as a competitive force at the top of the game, playing at the Asia Cup, as well as taking two wins off Zimbabwe, and coming close to making it to the T20 World Cup for the first time. Oza first won the prestigious award in 2022.

While the announcement was made public on Sunday, Oza had been told she had won last week, when the ICC wanted to conduct an interview to publicise the award.

“I just got a call and didn’t know what it was for,” Oza, 27, said. “Anjani [Gaja, the Emirates Cricket Board’s operations manager for UAE Women] said, ‘Congratulations, you have won this’. I thought, ‘Oh, wow’. I didn’t know what to say.

“Since [Sunday morning, when the ICC announced the award] I have been getting messages of congratulations from lots of people. I have been busily typing back saying, ‘Thank you, thank you’.”

Oza won the same award two years previously. Shortly after being presented with that, Ahmed Raza became the new coach of the UAE women’s team. At one of the first meetings with his new charges, he set Oza the target of repeating the achievement.

“He said the challenge to me was to try to win this award again, and in 2024, I was happy I could do that,” Oza said.

“The first time I got an award from the ICC was obviously very special. This time I feel like I have done well against better sides, and it feels better winning it for that reason. Back in 2022, it was recognition for performances against Gulf nations.

“This time we got to play against better sides, and I was able to score runs against them.”

Oza’s year started with her being named the player of the tournament as the leading run scorer in the qualification tournament for the Asia Cup.

After that, she played a key role in taking the national team to the brink of qualification for the T20 World Cup. She made 66 not out against the Netherlands in the group stage to put the UAE through to the all-important semi-final in Abu Dhabi.

The two finalists in that event would make it to the main event – which was subsequently relocated from Bangladesh to the UAE due to civil unrest.

Despite her defiant 66 from 44 balls against eventual tournament winners Sri Lanka, the UAE fell narrowly short of an upset.

Her overall haul for the year of 711 T20I runs was bettered only by Sri Lanka’s Chamari Athapaththu (720) and India opener Smriti Mandhana (763). In addition, she took 16 wickets at an average of 19.68, with an economy rate of 5.41 runs per over.

“It is great to be able to perform for your country at whatever level you are playing at,” Oza said.

“If it is helping your team win games, that is something you want to do. When you are able to do that against higher-ranked teams, as we did against Zimbabwe, that makes you feel like you are contributing to the team becoming better.

“We are achieving success as a team, and as an individual as well.”

The overriding memory of the 2024 campaign for supporters of the UAE women’s team will likely be Oza’s effort in defeat against Sri Lanka.

The batter herself regards the 84 she made in a win against Zimbabwe in Windhoek later in the year – when UAE won a tri-series involving them and hosts Namibia – as her favourite innings of the year.

“I did enjoy [the Sri Lanka] innings but it didn’t end well, so I would pick the 84 I made against Zimbabwe,” she said.

“They were a higher-ranked side, we got points on the board, and have come up to No 15 in the world rankings now. We beat them twice out of three times. I did enjoy batting against Sri Lanka but it doesn’t have such good memories attached to it.”