David Warner wins Australia top individual cricket prize for second year in a row

Melbourne: Prolific opening batsman David Warner has won Australian cricket’s top individual prize for the second year in a row, beating skipper Steve Smith and paceman Mitchell Starc for the Allan Border Medal tonight.

Warner is the fourth player – following former skippers Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke and allrounder Shane Watson – to win back-to-back awards.

As test vice-captain, Warner finished the season with centuries in consecutive tests against Pakistan in Melbourne and Sydney, where he became the first batsman to score 100 in the opening session of a test match in Australia.

The 30-year-old left-hander joined fellow Australians Victor Trumper (1902 in Manchester), Charlie Macartney (1926 in Leeds) and Donald Bradman (1930 in Leeds) as well as Pakistan’s Majid Khan (1976 in Karachi) among the batsmen to have achieved the feat.

He was voted Australia’s limited-overs international player of the year after scoring a world-leading 1,388 runs in ODIs, including nine centuries, in the voting period.

Starc was voted test player of the year, taking 52 wickets in the voting period, and Meg Lanning was took the prize for the Australia’s top female player.