Australia's Mitchell Starc may have claimed the "official" Cricket World Cup most-valuable-player award last night, but the Herald's own ranking system put a Kiwi and a South African on top as joint winners.
After a tournament that included 42 pools games, four quarter-finals, two semi-finals and last night's big finaleat the MCG, Black Cap Trent Boult and South Africa captain AB de Villiers shared the top honour. Sri Lanka's Kumar Sangakkara, New Zealand's Daniel Vettori and India's Mohammed Shami rounded out the top five.
Following each game of the World Cup, Herald cricket writers David Leggat, Dylan Cleaver and Andrew Alderson ranked their top three players from the match and awarded them points - either three, two or one. These scores were aggregated over the entire tournament.
For instance, in New Zealand's thrilling win over Australia at Eden Park a few weeks back, Boult picked up three points, Kane Williamson two, while Mitchell Starc got one.
The panel didn't slavishly follow statistics but looked more broadly at a player's impact on the game and placed that within the context of his team's overall performance.
The New Zealand v Australia game at Eden Park perfectly illustrates this.
Boult picked up three points for his stunning spell of 5-27. While Starc bowled brilliantly to pick up six wickets, his team lost the game. Kane Williamson's 45, looked at as a raw statistic, may not have been as impressive as a six-wicket bag, but his innings, including that famous six off Pat Cummins, was instrumental in the Black Caps winning the game. He therefore got two points to Starc's one.
Boult had an excellent campaign, picking up 22 wickets. That saw him finish as the joint top wicket taker with Starc. De Villiers was the third highest run scorer of the tournament with 482, just behind Martin Guptill (547) and Sagakkara (541).
The Herald's top 20 players of the World Cup is as follows:
1-tied. Trent Boult - New Zealand (10 points) 1-tied. AB de Villiers - South Africa (10) 3. Kumar Sangakkara - Sri Lanka (9) 4-tied. Daniel Vettori - New Zealand (7) 4-tied. Mohammed Shami - India (7) 6-tied. Martin Guptill - New Zealand (6) 6-tied. Suresh Raina - India (6) 6-tied. Sarfraz Ahmed - Pakistan (6) 6-tied. Glenn Maxwell - Australia (6) 6-tied. Shikhar Dhawan - India (6) 6-tied. Mushfiqur Rahim - Bangladesh (6) 12-tied. Mitchell Starc - Australia (5) 12-tied. Brendon McCullum - New Zealand (5) 12-tied. Imran Tahir - South Africa (5) 12-tied. Aaron Finch - Australia (5) 12-tied. Tillakaratne Dilshan - Sri Lanka (5) 12-tied. Wahab Riaz - Pakistan (5) 12-tied. Ed Joyce - Ireland (5) 12-tied. Ian Bell - England (5) 12-tied. Sean Williams - Zimbabwe (5)
