The World Cup is finally at a close after a spectacular final which saw England claim the the trophy. When we published our player rankings in the lead up to the final, we noted that performances in the final still had potential to shift these rankings, and after some excellent individual performances in the final, that proved to be the case. Liam Plunkett and Jimmy Neesham picked up 3 wickets each, and in doing so they passed the fifty over mark for the tournament, making them eligible for a ranking here. With the bat, Ben Stokes starred with a magnificent unbeaten 84, although England's other top performers over the tournament failed to make an impact - Jason Roy could only managed 17 and Joe Root was dismissed for an unconvincing 7. ICC Player of the Tournament Kane Williamson also failed to live up to his earlier performances, being caught behind off Plunkett for 30.
Here we look at the final standings in our player rankings, discuss any new entries, and then produce our team of the tournament.
The Batters:
Despite only making 30 in the final, Kane Williamson retains his place as the most difficult batter to dismiss. New Zealand's Ross Taylor, however, drops out of the list entirely after only making just 15 and England stars Jason Roy and Joe Root drop down the list after their failures. The only new entry here, and in fact the only new entry across all the columns, is Ben Stokes, who picked up Man of the Match in the final. In the middle column, it's Joe Root who falls out of the top 10, and it's Nicholas Pooran in the final column.
In the middle column, where we place equal weight on both run scoring and wicket preservation, Shakib Al Hasan places first, with Jason Roy dropping to third.
In the bowlers table, there is a much more significant shift. The most striking thing here is that Jimmy Neesham, who became eligible for a ranking after bowling his full allocation in the final, hits top spot in both of the first two columns, ahead of tournament stars such as Lockie Ferguson and Mitchell Starc.
Whilst he has clearly had a great tournament, and his presence towards the top isn't a surprise, it feels like a stretch to say he was the best bowler, so this requires some further examination.
First of all, he had an excellent strike rate of 21.8, which isn't far behind tournament leader in this regard, Mitchell Starc, and is ahead of Kiwi teammate Lockie Ferguson. This alone should place him near the top of the first column. When we look more closely, we find that the average Jimmy Neesham delivery was bowled at a batter who averaged 41.8 throughout the tournament, and running the numbers through show us that the average bowler would have taken just 7 wickets bowling at these batters. Neesham took 15 - more than double what you'd expect.
For comparison, Ferguson bowled to batters averaging around 38, with an expected wicket count was 12. He took 21, which was an impressive return for sure, but he didn't over-perform to the degree that Neesham did. Mitchell Starc took 27, compared to an expected count of just over 13, so he is about level with Neesham in this regard, but he had an unspectacular economy rate which does push him down a bit here.
All this means that Jimmy Neesham, with his excellent strike rate and solid economy despite bowling to a relatively higher quality of batter, is pushed to the top of the list.
The other new entry here is Liam Plunkett, who drew plaudits for his ability to pick up wickets in the middle-overs throughout the tournament. These wickets tended to be big ones, best exemplified by claiming the scalp of Kane Williamson in the final. Plunkett's average was around 24, which is solid, but the average Plunkett delivery was to batters averaging 44.7. He picked up 4 more wickets and conceded 30 fewer runs than you would expect the average bowler to do with these deliveries. Add to that the illustrious list of batters he dismissed in the tournament - including Amla, Kohli and of course, Williamson - and it becomes no surprise that Plunkett emerges as one of our bowlers of the tournament.
Lastly on the bowlers, it's worth highlighting New Zealand all-rounder Colin de Grandhomme's surprise entry into the economy focused list. He just passed our 50 over qualification period, and the driving factor behind this is his remarkable economy rate of 4.15, way ahead of the next best, which is Bumrah at 4.42. Also, whilst he only picked up 6 wickets, these did include star performers Joe Root and Shakib Al Hasan.
Now that we've ranked our players, it's time to put together our team of the tournament. As it turns out, it's very similar to the official team of the tournament awarded by the ICC. The only two names in that team who miss out here are both English; Joe Root and Jofra Archer. Joe Root scored five 50+ scores in the tournament, but none of these came against any of the other semi-finalists, which means that he isn't rated as highly as other batters with similar overall figures.
Jofra Archer had an undeniably impressive tournament, but Plunkett takes his place here. Archer bowled a lot at weaker batters - if we run the numbers here we'd expect an average bowler to take 14 wickets with the deliveries Archer bowled. He managed 20 in the end, which represents a strong return, but Plunkett's impressive performance in spite of bowling to a much higher quality of batting gets him the nod here.
We've gone with a slightly different balance to the team than the ICC to ensure that all our top performers get in - specifically we've selected 5 from our bowlers list and six from our batters list, although the batting isn't too thin since Neesham is an allrounder. We've also included Pakistan batter Babar Azam as our 12th man.
Heavy Bail's Team of the ICC World Cup 2019:
JJ Roy
RG Sharma
KS Williamson
Shakib Al Hasan
BA Stokes
AT Carey (wk)
JDS Neesham
LE Plunkett
MA Starc
LH Ferguson
JJ Bumrah
Babar Azam
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