Now for the semi finals-1

PS: If you are feeling nostalgic for the national anthems of the departed teams, you can see this (from the 2015 WC):

https://abn397.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/national-anthems-of-wc-2015/

Now we have:

Jul 9: 1st SF, Ind v NZ, 1500 IST

Jul 11: 2nd SF, Aus v Eng, 1500 IST

Jul 14: Final, 1500 IST

And the road so far:

This WC has so far been marked by several relatively close (but not very close) finishes.

Also see the ICC rankings after the matches of Jul 6:

Note that only a fraction of a point separates England and India.

The top 4 here are indeed the semi-finalists. And the top 10 are indeed those who qualified for the World Cup. Ireland and Zimbabwe would have been out of their depth, as Ireland is 10 points behind Afghanistan.

A quick look at the IPL-style contests at the moment:

Orange Cap: RG Sharma 647 runs, followed by DA Warner (638) and Shakib Al Hasan* (606).

Purple Cap: MA Starc 26 wickets, followed by Mustafizur Rahman* (20) and 4 others with 17.

Most 6s: EJG Morgan 22, AJ Finch 18 and RG Sharma 14.

(Shakib* also has 11 wickets).

*No further part in the 2019 World Cup.

Next we will take up the statistical highlights so far.

ODIs of 2018-1

The ODIs of the year are over, and we review team and individual performances here:

First, the ICC rankings at the end of the year:

It can be seen that the 10 teams participating in the 2019 World Cup are the top 10 here.

This table includes matches in the past 2-3 years. Nepal has ODI status but has not played enough matches to get a ranking.

Here we look at W/L ratios. This and all subsequent tables refer to performances in the calendar year 2018.

Teams ranked by W/L ratio

Guess who finished last 🙂

And guess who played the most matches.

Of course, this table does not mean much as it does not take into account the opponent’s strength, which the ICC rankings are supposed to.

We now move to individual performances, starting with

Batting:

500 or more runs:

Also note that Kohli (6) and RG Sharma (5) have the most centuries, while Kohli (9) also has the most fifties followed by RG Sharma, Root and Fakhar Zaman with 8.

Innings scores of 125 or more:

Batting averages (Minimum 20 innings, all instances):

You might expect Kohli, Sharma and a few others to be here but they did not play enough innings. However, they appear below:

Highest strike rates (Minimum 80.00 for a minimum of 500 balls faced):

Note that England has the two top spots, while India also has a few with strike rates above 100.

To be continued.

Review of the World Cup qualifying tournament-2018

Afghanistan defeated West Indies in the final. These two teams qualified to participate in the World Cup in 2019. Here is a summary of the table (though it does not include the final):

Also: 7th Netherlands, 8th Nepal, 9th PNG, 10th Hong Kong

Individual performances are given below. Matches involving Netherlands and Nepal did not have ODI status at the time of the tournament, and are thus excluded from Statsguru’s database and are not included in the tables below.

However, from now onwards Netherlands, Nepal, Scotland and UAE have ODI status while Hong Kong and PNG do not. A further reshuffle will be done in a process which will end about 4 years from now.

Most runs in ODIs (150 and above):

No one scored more than one century, while Rahmat Shah was the only one with three 50+ scores. Note that BRM Taylor scored the most runs, far ahead of CS MacLeod.

Highest innings in ODIs (90 and above):

Note that the two highest scores were by relatively lesser known players.

Most wickets in ODIs (8 and above):

No one took 5wi more than once. 3 players took two 4wis apiece.

Best innings bowling in ODIs (4wi and above):

Note that the top two performances were almost identical ( 5-27 and 5-28).

Most dismissals in ODIs (6 and above):

NJ O’Brien was by far the leading keeper. The best by a non-keeper was 8 by N Zadran.

Most dismissals in an innings in ODIs (3 and above):

While NJ O’Brien and McKechnie took 4 dismissals as keepers, 4 non-keepers took 3 catches each.

All-round overall performance in ODIs (see criteria below):

Holder, followed by Mustafa were clearly the leading all-rounders of the series.

Best all-round match performances (minimum 30 runs and 3 wickets):

A number of good performances.

And finally, the ICC ranking tables after the final got over on 25th March:

It can be seen that in the long run Zimbabwe and Ireland did not do well enough to claim themselves in the top ten.