World Cup 2019: Three players who can win the Player of the Tournament award

The 2019 World Cup has reached the last day of its league stages and we have our four semi-finalists - Australia, India, England and New Zealand. India and Australia are playing their last league matches on Saturday and that will decide who tops the league and, more importantly, avoids an in-form England in the semi-finals.

Australia, who are currently the table-toppers, have been led by their two openers - Aaron Finch and David Warner with the bat and Mitchel Starc with the ball. Warner and Finch have complemented each other perfectly and have consistently given good starts. Steven Smith has played some crucial innings in the middle and the finisher has been the vice-captain - Alex Carey. Starc has been outstanding with the ball, picking up 24 wickets, and has an able partner in Pat Cummins for support.

India, currently placed second, have had Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohl scoring the bulk of the runs. Kohli has six fifties in this tournament and will be looking for a couple of centuries in the final week. Jasprit Burma and Mohammed Shami have provided important breakthroughs to bail the team out of trouble on multiple occasions.

England and New Zealand, placed third and fourth respectively, have had contrasting campaigns. The latter, led by the exemplary Kane Williamson, started very strongly but lost their last three games. The hosts had a mixed opening stage, but finished very strongly with convincing wins over India and New Zealand on the back of a couple of hundreds from Jonny Bairstow. Apart from the top four, teams like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka all had their moments but faltered at the crucial stages.

There have been many outstanding individual performances in this World Cup. With the league stage ending today, let's have a look at three players who have a strong case for the player of the tournament award.

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#3 Rohit Sharma

India vice-captain Rohit Sharma has had an outstanding World Cup. He has already scored four hundreds, which is a record for most hundreds in a single edition of the Cup that he now jointly holds with the Sri Lankan great Kumar Sangakarra, and has enough matches to go one better.

Sharma has scored 544 runs at an average of 90 odd. He is the only the second Indian batsmen after Sachin Tendulkar to have scored more than 500 runs in a single World Cup. The Mumbai batsman has been slightly circumspect at the start, seen off the new ball and then attacked as the going got easier. He has been lethal when given anything short and has hit many sixes in the square leg region with the pull shot.

Sharma’s best innings came in the biggest match of them all - India vs Pakistan. With Sarfaraz Ahmed winning the toss and putting India in, Rohit unleashed his willow on the Pakistan bowlers. He took a special liking for Shaheen Afridi who kept bowling short to him and Sharma kept bringing out the pull shot. The opener scored 140 runs in 113 balls to take India to a score of 336 which was well beyond Pakistan’s reach. He also scored hundreds against South Africa, Bangladesh and England.

With potentially three matches still to play, Sharma will be looking to end as the leading run-scorer, win the player of the tournament trophy and most importantly - win his first World Cup.

Also see – India vs New Zealand head to head stats

Mitchell Starc has been lethal for Australia.

#2 Mitchell Starc

Australia came into this World Cup with some confidence on the back of series victories against India and Pakistan. However, even the most ardent Australia fan would not have thought that they would be potential table-toppers after the league stage. One of the key reasons for that has been Mitchell Starc.

Starc has picked up 24 wickets in eight matches and has been lethal at all stages of the game. His yorkers have been a nightmare to all batsmen and the ball he bowled to Ben Stokes, in a famous win over England, will go down as one of the balls of the tournament. The left-armer has provided wickets at crucial stages of the game and has bailed Australia out of trouble on many occasions, most notably in the game against the West Indies.

The fast bowler has been Aaron Finch’s go-to man in pressure situations and has never let his captain down. Coming into the world cup, Starc was a bit off the boil and low on confidence after a poor Test series against India at home. However, hr has found his mojo and has bowled as well as he did in the 2015 World Cup where he won the Player of the Tournament.

Starc will look to bring his best game to the semi-final and final to take Australia to their sixth world title and become the first cricketer ever to win the World Cup player of the tournament award twice.

Bangladesh have been propelled by the brilliance of Shakib Al Hasan.

#1 Shakib Al Hasan

The 1999 World Cup had Lance Klusener. The 2011 World Cup had Yuvraj Singh. Now, the 2019 World Cup has an all-round performance which should be right up there with Klusener and Yuvraj. That series of performances has bee provided by Shakib Al Hasan.

Shakib has come of age in this World cup, scoring a mammoth 606 runs at an average of 87. He has also taken 11 wickets at an economy rate of 5.39. To put things into perspective - Klusner had scored 281 runs and picked up 17 wickets in '99 and Yuvraj scored 362 runs and picked up 15 wickets in his dream World Cup in 2011. Both Klusner and Yuvraj won the Player of the Tournament award and Shakib has a strong case to win it this year.

The all-rounder has been the backbone of Bangladesh and many-a-times almost single-handedly won them matches. Shakib is the first player to score 600 runs and take 10 wickets in a single edition of the World Cup. Even though Bangladesh did not qualify for the semi-finals, he deserves to take home the Player of the Tournament award.