Overton and Luff win top PCA awards — SkimNews
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- Craig Overton won the men's PCA player of the year after scoring three first-class hundreds and averaging under 20 with the ball for Somerset, who narrowly missed the County Championship title and reached the T20 Blast semi-finals; his form has sparked England recall talk to fill the vacancy left by Ben Stokes, four years after Overton's eighth and most recent Test cap.
- Sophie Luff became the first women's player of the year not to have played international cricket since 2021, crossing 1,000 runs across formats — including a 40-plus average in the One-Day Cup — and winning The Hundred with Trent Rockets.
- Sonny Baker took the men's young player of the year after his Test debut against New Zealand at The Oval in June, plus Hundred glory with Manchester Super Giants and a T20 Blast final appearance for Hampshire.
- Tilly Corteen-Coleman, a 19-year-old left-arm spinner, claimed the women's young player award following her surprise inclusion in England's T20 World Cup squad.
- Heather Knight received the Outstanding Contribution Award following her international retirement, while fellow retiree Tammy Beaumont collected a Special Merit Award.
Why it matters: Overton's award lands at exactly the moment England is casting for an all-rounder successor to Ben Stokes, making the PCA's peer-voted endorsement a meaningful data point in that selection debate. Luff's win underlines the depth of English women's domestic cricket — a domestic-only player beat three internationals — while the young-player awards spotlight Baker's Test breakthrough and Corteen-Coleman's World Cup call-up as the pipeline feeding England's white-ball future.
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