This piece is an accompaniment to a similar article analysing the tournament's batters. Please read that if you haven't already, as it contains a little more detail around the methodology used to generate our ratings.
Having already looked at the batters, it's time to turn our focus to the bowlers. Below are the results from the same model we used there, with weightings in place towards wicket-taking and economy respectively. We have imposed a qualifying criteria of having bowled a minimum of 15 overs:
There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that our model's bowler of the tournament is Anrich Nortje. He took 11 wickets at as astonishing average of 8.54, all at a superb economy rate of 5.37.
In second place with have Mitchell Santner. Whilst his raw figures are undoubtedly impressive - 9 wickets at 14.33 with an economy of 6.45 - there are a couple of players in Wanindu Hasaranga and Shaheen Shah Afridi who actually have both a better average and economy than the New Zealander, so it's worth having a dig further into these players' respective tournaments.
Further inspection reveals that the average Mitchell Santner delivery was, on average, bowled to a higher calibre of batter than that of either of the two bowlers mentioned above. His average delivery was to a batter averaging 28 with a strike rate of 128, in contrast to Hasaranga, who had a relatively easy ride when it came to which batters he got to bowl at.
In fact, despite being the top wicket taker in the tournament, Hasaranga misses out on our top 10 entirely. This is, as alluded to above, due to the fact that he spent much of time bowling at weaker batters, and he took most of wickets against the smaller sides in the competition - only 3 of his 15 wickets came against "major" cricket nations.
Next we have Shadab Khan, who turned in consistent performances throughout the tournament, and he is placed alongside his compatriot Shaheen Shah Afridi, with whom he shares similar figures in terms of both average and economy.
Next we have Lahiru Kumara, who is a surprise entry here given his tournament bowling average of 22, which is the highest of anyone who features in the top 10 in our balanced column and is even higher than several who did not make it, such as the aforementioned Hasaranga.
This is, as with Santner, down to the fact that he consistently found himself bowling to higher quality batters throughout the competition. He did a good job of keeping the runs down against traditionally fast scorers, such as Sam Curran and Glenn Maxwell, and was still able to pick up regular wickets.
The remainder of the list is made up of those who produced solid averages and economies despite a relatively tougher set of batters to bowl at. On each side of our lists we so see a couple of interesting names worth touching upon brieflt.
Firstly, we see Mustafizur Rahman pop up right at the top when we weight towards economy. He only managed 3 wickets during the tournament, so its a surprise to see him so high up, but his superb economy rate of 5.6 is obviously of great value in the short form of the game where keeping things tight can be just as important as taking wickets.
The other interesting name worth calling out is in the left hand column, where we are weighting towards wicket taking. Bas de Leede, of the Netherlands, ranks 4th here, which shouldn't come as a massive surprise since he was the second highest wicket taker in the tournament, His economy of 7.7 did let him down a bit, and prevents him from appearing in the centre or right hand columns, as does the fact that he did most of his best bowling against weaker sides like Namibia and U.A.E., but it's nice nonetheless to see some associate representation towards the top of our rankings.
Thanks for reading! If you liked this, please check out some of our older articles here and keep an eye out for our team of the tournament follow up article which we'll post after the final!
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