Cooper Connolly and Glenn Maxwell each polled 18 votes to tie the BBL|14 Player of the Tournament award

Perth Scorchers’ Cooper Connolly has capped a meteoric rise to the Australian set up to be crowned the KFC BBL|14 Player of the Tournament alongside one of the nation’s white-ball greats, Glenn Maxwell.

The pair of spin-bowling allrounders each polled 18 votes to win by two from Tim David, ending Adelaide Strikers’ captain Matt Short’s stranglehold on the award after winning the previous two seasons.

While Connolly rose to national prominence two summers ago with a nerveless cameo to clinch the BBL|12 title for the Scorchers in front of a packed Optus Stadium, his BBL|14 campaign was one of maturity and consistency.

The 21-year-old led the way for Perth in a rare tough season for the five-time BBL champions as they missed the finals for the first time in five years.

Connolly began the season with his maiden T20 half-century against Maxwell’s Melbourne Stars before adding a second against the Renegades just two games later with a contrastingly different innings.

With his side in deep trouble at 4-35 on a challenging Marvel Stadium surface, Connolly weathered the new ball threat and then cashed in with six sixes in the second half of the innings to post a career-best 66 off 50 balls.

That cemented the left-hander in his new top-order role as he also added scores of 37, 48no, 43no, 33 and 39no across his 10 innings to win the BKT Golden Bat award as the leading run-scorer for the home-and-away season with 351 at 50.14.

His left-arm finger spin also proved handy for Perth skipper Ashton Turner, claiming a wicket in six of the nine matches he was called upon to bowl.

The award is the icing on the cake in a stellar 12 months for the West Australian who finished last summer with a magnificent 90 on first-class debut in the Sheffield Shield final before going on to earn his ODI and T20I caps in 2024 and a maiden call-up to Australia’s Test squad last month for the ongoing tour of Sri Lanka.

Both Connolly and Maxwell are first-time winners of the BBL’s Player of the Tournament gong. The pair were also named in the official BBL|14 Team of the Tournament, as voted by the league’s eight head coaches.

But where Connolly started the season strong, Maxwell stormed home with several outrageous knocks to lift the Stars back into finals for the first time since BBL|09.

After missing the Stars’ first two games of the season with a hamstring injury, the 36-year-old returned to his match-winning best in BBL|14 having relinquished the club captaincy to Marcus Stoinis.

The veteran allrounder’s season will long be remembered for his miracle effort against the Renegades where he scored all 79 runs off the bat in an 81-run eighth-wicket partnership with Usama Mir that brought back memories of his 201 not out in the 2023 ODI World Cup.

Maxwell led the Stars’ resurgence back into finals contention with scores of 20no (10), 58no (32), 90 (52) and 76no (32) as they won their last five games of the regular season to clinch a top four spot.

He finished with 325 runs in nine innings striking at remarkable 186.782 in BBL|14, also going past 3000 career BBL runs to reinforce his status as one of the competition’s best ever.

Like this summer’s Weber WBBL|10 Player of the Tournament won by Ellyse Perry (Sydney Sixers) and Jess Jonassen (Brisbane Heat), it’s the first time the BBL award has been shared between two players.

The WBBL and BBL Player of the Tournament awards are decided by the standing umpires in each home-and-away match, with each umpire submitting votes on a 3-2-1 basis.