Following on from our batter rankings, it's now time to take a look at the bowlers. As mentioned in the previous article, Mitchell Starc was the standout performer in terms of wickets, breaking Glenn McGrath's 12-year old record for most wickets at a World Cup. In general, it was a World Cup for the seamers, with New Zealand's Ferguson and Boult picking up 35 wickets between them, and Woakes, Archer, Wood and Plunkett all performing well for England. Jasprit Bumrah also proved dangerous for India, taking 18 wickets with a remarkable economy rate of 4.4.
Here we apply our player rating system to rank the bowlers - using regression analysis to take account of the quality of the batters they were bowling at. The model also allows us to adjust the weighting we place on wicket-taking or run prevention, so we are able to analyse bowling performance through a number of different lenses.
As with the batters, we've imposed a qualification criteria - a bowler must have bowled at least 50 overs to qualify. This does mean, however, that a number of good performers miss out - either from having missed a few games or only contributing on a part-time basis, but we'll give them an honourable mention:
Mohammed Shami might have finished on top of the lot if he was able to continue his fine form in the games he played. He only played 4 matches, but picked up an impressive 14 wickets at an average of 13.8, including 5 against England, but missed out on selection in the semi-final and ultimately fell well short of the qualification criteria.
Shaheen Afridi is a similar case, having only played 5 games for his 16 wickets. His performances may have left Pakistan wondering what might have been if he had been selected in the earlier fixtures. Their group stage elimination means that he was unable to reach the 50 overs required for a ranking in our model.
New Zealand all-rounder Jimmy Neesham was a surprise revelation with the ball this tournament, picking up 12 wickets including the prize scalp of Jason Roy. If he gets a bowl in the final he is likely to be eligible for a rating, and having picked up impressive figures despite doing the bulk of his bowling to top quality middle order batters, it's very likely he'll be placed towards the top.
An interesting revelation from this analysis were the performances of England seamer Liam Plunkett. He has only picked up 8 wickets but, like Jimmy Neesham, he has bowled the vast majority of his balls at recognised batters. He also picked up crucial wickets - Kohli, de Kock, Amla and Rahim are amongst his victims, and as such is rated very highly by our model. He needs four overs in the final to qualify for a rating, and it will be very interesting to see how he rates in the final standings
With that out of the way, let's get into the rankings. In the below table we can see the rankings for a few different values for our weighting metrics. As with the batters, both attributes are accounted for in all three columns, even when we have placed weighting towards one of them. This means that, for example, despite taking thirteen wickets Mohammad Saifuddin misses out entirely because of his woeful economy rate of 7.2.
When we focus on wicket taking ability, Mitchell Starc takes the crown here. He was the leading wicket taker by a significant margin, with the best average and strike rate of anyone who meets the qualification criteria.
Interestingly, Mohammad Amir pips Lockie Ferguson to second place despite Ferguson besting him in both strike rate and bowling average, as well as having one more wicket. This is down to the quality of wickets taken - Ferguson picked up the bulk of his wickets in games against Afghanistan, Sri Lanka against West Indies, whereas Amir took 5 against Australia - including Finch and Carey - and 3 against India, where he picked up the big wickets of Kohli and Dhoni.
Bumrah is up there as expected, having had an excellent tournament, but we see a somewhat surprising name in fifth with Chris Morris. He seemed to have had a decent tournament - 13 wickets at 26 apiece but, like Plunkett and Neesham, he spent most of his tournament bowling at recognised batsman and thus didn't have much opportunity to stock up on wickets from the tailenders. The wickets he did get includes Dhoni, Ross Taylor and Alex Carey, and this suggests he was a more threatening bowler than his modest figures suggest.
Looking down further we have Rahman - who picked up twenty wickets but his very poor economy drags him down - and New Zealand pair Henry and Boult, who both bowled very well and picked up a number of big scalps. Encouragingly for New Zealand, and perhaps worryingly for England, this gives us three of the Kiwi attack in the top 8 bowlers, and they are all there no matter how we are weighting the figures.
We also have Archer, who was excellent throughout but picked up a lot of his 19 wickets against weaker sides, and Mohammed Nabi who, despite only taking 10 wickets, tended to take big ones, with Rahul, Kohli, Babar Azam and Imam-ul-Haq amongst his victims.
Moving onto the middle column, where economy becomes more important. Mitchell Starc drops to fourth - his economy was at 5.4 and his poor figures in the group stage game against India and the semi-final against England drag him down here. On the other hand, Lockie Ferguson went for under 50 in tough games against Australia and India, and his superior economy to both Starc and Amir see him rise to number one.
Archer, Boult and Nabi all improve, having all been difficult to get away, and the only new entry is Mujeeb Ur Rahman of Afghanistan.
Mujeeb is a really interesting case - looking at the final column he astonishingly rises to third place, behind only Ferguson and Bumrah. He only took 7 wickets, which meant he got nowhere near our wicket-weighted top ten, but these can't be discounted entirely. His wickets include Rohit Sharma and Shakib Al Hasan, two of the best batters of the tournament, as well as the prize wicket of Australia's Steve Smith. What has really boosted him, however, is his economy. Of the bowlers who qualify for a rating, only Bumrah has a better economy than Mujeeb's 4.48.
Over the course of the tournament, Mujeeb has produced some excellent figures. 10-1-34-2 against Pakistan was a superb return, and better yet was his 10-0-26-1 against India. Perhaps most significantly, he recorded 0-44 from his ten overs against England, in a game where his colleagues were being taken apart by Morgan and co. Just one of Eoin Morgan's sixes came from Mujeeb's bowling, with Root and Bairstow also struggling to get him away. In the same innings, Rashid Khan went for 110 in 9 overs.
With one game still to play, there is still an opportunity for some players to force their way into our rankings. Plunkett and Neesham will likely be ranked towards the top if they bowl well in the final, and Roy and Williamson will need strong performances to keep them at the top of the batting charts. Once that is all said and done, and the data becomes available, we'll update our rankings and use the final standing to select our ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 XI.