ICC announces Team of the 2015 Cricket World Cup

Brendon McCullum named captain of ICC’s Team of the World Cup

The International Cricket Council (ICC) today announced the team of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 with Brendon McCullum as its captain.

McCullum was chosen as the captain following his aggressive, innovative and inspirational leadership during the 44-day tournament that was the cornerstone of his team’s progression to the final where it lost to Australia by seven wickets.

In doing so, McCullum also scored 328 runs in nine matches with four half-centuries at a strike-rate of 188.50.

The team was chosen by a select group of experts who were given the task of picking a balanced side on the basis of performances in the tournament. Statistics were used but were not the sole basis for selections.

In addition to McCullum, the side includes four New Zealanders – Corey Anderson, Trent Boult, Martin Guptill, Daniel Vettori – three Australians in Glenn Maxwell, Steven Smith and Mitchell Starc, two South Africans, AB de Villiers and Morne Morkel, with Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara as wicketkeeper-batsman.

Zimbabwe’s Brendan Taylor, who finished with 433 runs in six matches, was named as the 12th ?man.

Team of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 in batting order:

Player	Country
Martin Guptill	New Zealand
Brendon McCullum (capt)	New Zealand
Kumar Sangakkara (wicketkeeper)	Sri Lanka
Steven Smith	Australia
AB de Villiers	South Africa
Glenn Maxwell	Australia
Corey Anderson	New Zealand
Daniel Vettori	New Zealand
Mitchell Starc	Australia
Trent Boult	New Zealand
Morne Morkel	South Africa
Brendan Taylor (12th man)	Zimbabwe

ICC General Manager – Cricket, Geoff Allardice, chairman of the panel, said: “The panel had an extremely difficult choice of selecting a 12-member squad at the back of an outstanding tournament, highlighted by some eye-catching individual performances including two double-centuries, 38 centuries, two hat-tricks and 28 four-wicket hauls.

“There were a number of other players that were discussed as possible selections in the team. These included batsmen Mahmudullah (Bangladesh) and Shaiman Anwar (UAE), fast bowlers Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Shami (both India), Wahab Riaz (Pakistan) and spinners Imran Tahir (South Africa) and Ravichandran Ashwin (India).

“But there were so many brilliant individual performances during the tournament that it was not possible to fit them into the team. The panel eventually came up with this side, which, in their view, was the most balanced outfit that is capable of beating any side on any given day.”