Pakistan all-rounder Arafat Minhas has been named among the nominees for the ICC Men’s Player of the Month award for October 2026, capping a remarkable month in which the young left-arm spinner helped his country lift a home one-day tri-series. The 21-year-old is one of three men shortlisted for the monthly honour, alongside South Africa’s Marco Jansen and West Indies captain Shai Hope, and none of the three has won the award before.
Minhas earned his place on the shortlist with a string of match-winning contributions in the tri-series against England and Sri Lanka, a tournament Pakistan went on to win on home soil. Across five matches he scored 149 runs at an average of 29.80 and a strike rate of 119.20, and he took nine wickets at an average of 23.22 while conceding just 5.13 runs an over. Those numbers tell only part of the story, because his best performances arrived exactly when Pakistan needed them most, first with the bat and then with the ball, and often in the same match.
The defining display of his month came against England in Rawalpindi. Minhas first steadied Pakistan’s innings with a crucial 59, giving the hosts something to defend, and then ran through the England batting order with career-best figures of six wickets for 40 runs. It was the second-best bowling return by a Pakistan bowler in a one-day international on home soil, and it bowled England out for 215 to seal an 87-run win for Pakistan after the hosts had posted 302 for nine. He was named player of the match.
He saved another of his finest innings for the final. Facing Sri Lanka in Lahore on October 31, with Pakistan chasing a demanding target of 326 to win the tournament, Minhas walked in and smashed 61 runs from just 31 balls, turning a tense chase into a comfortable one and carrying his side over the line. The innings underlined the other side of his game, the clean hitting and the appetite for the big occasion, and by the end of the tournament he had done enough to be named player of the series as well. For a player who only made his one-day international debut against Australia earlier this year, it was a rapid rise from newcomer to central figure.
The nomination is a measure of how quickly Minhas has become important to Pakistan’s one-day setup. Teams are always searching for a genuine all-rounder, someone who can bat in the middle order and still be trusted with a full allocation of overs, and Minhas has shown in a single tournament that he can do both under pressure. His left-arm spin gives Pakistan control through the middle overs and a wicket-taking option when the opposition looks to accelerate, while his batting above a run a ball gives the side a finisher who can change the tempo of an innings.
His rivals for the award both produced series-defining performances of their own. Jansen was the driving force behind South Africa’s 2-1 victory over Australia in a three-match Test series counting towards the World Test Championship. The tall seam-bowling all-rounder scored 85 runs and took six wickets in the second Test at Gqeberha, guiding the Proteas to a win by an innings and 31 runs, and then added another half-century and three wickets in the deciding third Test to complete South Africa’s comeback. His performances also carried him to the top of the ICC Men’s Test All-Rounder Rankings.
Hope, meanwhile, was recognised for a remarkable run of batting against India in white-ball cricket. The West Indies captain struck an unbeaten 162 in the third one-day international in New Chandigarh, steering his side to a successful chase of 352, the highest target the West Indies have ever hunted down in the format. He carried that form into the five-match Twenty20 series, scoring two centuries, including an unbeaten 102 from 50 balls in the fourth match, and finished the series with 261 runs at a strike rate of 190.51.
The women’s shortlist for October features India’s Deepti Sharma, Bangladesh’s Sobhana Mostary and Australia’s Annabel Sutherland. As with the men’s award, the winner is decided through a combination of votes from a panel of experts and supporters around the world, and the ICC will announce the winners once the voting process is complete. The monthly award has become a useful barometer of form across international cricket, picking out the players who have shaped a month rather than simply those with the biggest reputations.
For Pakistan, the nomination arrives at a welcome moment. The tri-series win gave the one-day side a trophy and a sense of direction, and Minhas’s emergence adds a new dimension to a squad that has leaned heavily on its established names. Young all-rounders are prized because they solve two problems at once, and if he can repeat his October form over a longer stretch, Pakistan will have found a player around whom the middle order and the bowling attack can both be built. Whether he wins the monthly award or not, the nomination itself marks his arrival.
