Cricket fans have expressed their sadness after news broke that the Australian Cricket Awards function, where the Allan Border Medal is handed out, is set to be scrapped.
According to Code Sports, the awards night will not be done in person in 2026, with the Allan Border Medal and Belinda Clark Award handed out virtually.
Cricket Australia (CA) reportedly found it impossible to schedule a suitable time for the country’s top male and female cricketers to come together and has therefore decided not to hold the awards ceremony in person in 2026.
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It comes after, for the first time in the 25-year history of the Allan Border Medal, the winner of the prestigious honour didn’t accept the award from the cricket icon in person in 2025.
Australia’s top male player of last season, Travis Head, instead gave a pre-recorded interview while the Australian Test team toured Sri Lanka.
That interview was then played on the night, with Border sadly unable to congratulate him in person.
The Australian Cricket Awards has always taken place in February, in a gap between the end of the Test summer and a tour overseas. But that slot is no longer available.
This summer, the Aussie men will head to Pakistan in late January for a T20 series before the T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka and India and then the Indian Premier League (IPL) kicks off in late March.
While the female equivalent of the IPL, the Women’s Premier League, has also been shifted into the January-February slot, meaning the potential Belinda Clarke Medal winners are also to be abroad.
Therefore, the Australian Cricket Awards – which was formerly called the Allan Border Medal night until the female equivalent Belinda Clark Award was introduced – is set to no longer continue in its previous form, instead either becoming completely virtual or hybrid.
It is a sad blow for the night, with the AB Medal instituted at the turn of the century and the awards event seen as cricket’s night of nights, rivalling the AFL’s Brownlow Medal ceremony and the NRL’s Dally M Awards.
Border has always been there to hand over the award named in his honour, something he clearly took great pride in.
And with the news it may never be the same again, the cricket world has expressed its sadness for the great man and suggested they separate the Allan Border Medal and the Belinda Clarke Award into two separate nights so players can again be in attendance.
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