(Note: This piece was written before the Twenty20 World Championship final. Shahid Afridi was eventually selected as the Player of the Tournament.)
 

While the ‘dream final’ and talk of who is going to take the trophy has hogged most of the newsprint, newsreel, mindspace and general talk over the past two days, some attention has also been reserved for another interesting question – who will be the first ever player to don the crown of the ‘T20 Player of the tournament’ and become, in many ways, the face of  the format and all that it stands for. No doubt, the name will go down in the history of the game and will be remembered.

An interesting way to list out some of the leading performers in this tournament is to use the Twenty20 Ranking points (see below: Parameters used). This spectrum sheds some light on those players who are ahead of the rest of the pack.

Leading Bowlers 

The tournament started out in a dense cloud of speculation that it was going to be nothing less than a nightmare for the bowlers. Ironically, it has now emerged as a format where, when everyone is going hammer and tongs, it is the bowling performance of both the teams which makes the difference between winners and losers.

The fact that formidable batting sides such as Sri Lanka and South Africa have been curtailed to mediocre scores of 101 and 116 is evidence that bowlers who have kept their nerve have been rewarded. Let’s have a look at the some of best of this creed that the tournament has produced so far:

 Stuart Clark has been looked at as someone to fill McGrath’s boots, and Pigeon himself would have been proud to have the miserly figures that Clark has maintained in this tournament.  He is the highest wicket taker in the tournament with 12 wickets which have come at just 6 runs an over, an economy rate that was a lot more awe-inspiring before Yuvraj set about altering the scheme of things.

While the highly rated and hyped Mohammad Asif has lost his spot at the top of the pecking order, his relative fall from grace has not hit the Pakistani campaign too hard, thanks to Afridi and Umar Gul chipping in with some spectacularly consistent performances. The other name you wouldn’t have bet on before the tournament but who has risen through the ranks is RP Singh.

Leading Batsmen 

Even as the world believed that this is going to be a joyride for batsmen, the tournament has made it clear that batting might, in fact, be severely more stressful under such conditions.

At any rate, the tournament has sifted the gold dust from the sand, separated those looking for some mindless slogging from the skilled, clever, genuine run-scorers. Here are some of the players who have lived up to the pressure of scoring at 8 and 9 runs per over consistently:

Hayden carried his form over into the new format by smashing four half centuries in six games at a formidable strike rate of 149 with sufficient power and class to take the game away from any opposition(well, most opposition). Misbah-Ul- Haq has been one of the surprises, resurrecting his international career after a few years of cricketing wilderness and in the process, inspiring Pakistan’s phenomenal run in the tournament with his formidable scoring ability and a cool head to support some hot hitting.

While Yuvraj (SR 235) puts more distance than he did on his sixes between him and the rest of the batsmen as far as strike rate is concerned, McMillan has emerged as one of the biggest entertainers of the tournament with the most number of sixes hit- 13.

Chris Gayle (SR 195, ranking points 395), who gave us the century that will go down in Twenty20 lore as one of most savage displays of power ever, Brandon Taylor (SR 127, ranking points 199), who was instrumental in pulling the rug from under the Aussies feet, Junaid Siddique (SR 145, ranking points 175.32), who looks good to feature significantly in the future of Bangladeshi cricket are some of the other players who deserve mention, and could have made it to the above lists had they been given enough opportunities in the tournament.

Parameters used

The value of each player has been arrived at by shortlisting a few key parameters that determine optimum Twenty20 performance, assigning weights to them as per their importance, and processing the information to come out with Twenty20 ranking points.

As far as batsmen are concerned, it is clearly the strike rate that is of maximum importance, and has been given the most weightage. However, it is not just about the strike rate, it is also about for how long and how consistently can you keep the rate of scoring going. So two other parameters, the batting average and the frequency of scoring 50+ innings, have also been given due consideration, although they are assigned lower weights than the strike rate.

For the bowlers, the economy rate at which the bowlers operate should be given equal importance as the number of wickets, if not more, since both these factors are often a function of each other. The 4 over restriction means that the strike rate of a bowler is also a secondary factor that has been taken into account.

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Vistasp - Yuvi's figures Unregistered | 2007-09-24 01:51:51 Something is wrong here. Yuvraj ha shit many more than just the one six mentioned in the table up there. Reply | Quote

raghu Unregistered | 2007-09-24 02:32:03 It says 12 Reply | Quote

vishal - agrawal Unregistered | 2008-01-21 05:09:35 solid hai yaar Reply | Quote

lazim - sachin Unregistered | 2008-03-05 18:01:48 i think sachin is a great player Reply | Quote

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