2019 Cricket World Cup: a look at the tournament's winners and losers

The hits

Nicholas Pooran
The 23-year-old West Indies left-hander started the World Cup with just one ODI cap, having been dismissed for a four-ball duck against England in February.

Punters who prize potential over pedigree were handsomely rewarded, however, as 14-1 shot Pooran finished the tournament as the Windies’ top runscorer.

He top-scored with 63 in the defeat to England, when none of his teammates reached 40, and made a brilliant 118 off 103 balls in a losing cause against Sri Lanka at Chester-le-Street.

Chris Gayle is coming to the end of his international career but Pooran, along with fellow young batting stars Shai Hope and Shimron Hetmyer, should ensure the Windies enter the post-Universe Boss era in good spirits.

Shakib Al Hasan
The Bangladesh legend went into the World Cup as the ICC’s top-ranked ODI all-rounder and he franked that status despite a patchy campaign for the Tigers.

The left-hander played only three games during Hyderabad’s 2019 IPL season but he used the downtime to work on his batting with spectacular results, making a mockery of the 5-1 about him being Bangladesh’s leading batsman.

Only Rohit Sharma and David Warner scored more runs than Shakib’s 606 during the league stage and his consistency made him the darling of spread performance buyers with scores of 75, 64, 121, 124 not out, 41, 51, 66 and 64.

Shakib’s ability to pierce the field with inventive shots is reflected by his tournament tallies of 60 fours and only two sixes while he also picked up 11 wickets, including 5-29 from ten overs against Afghanistan.

Pakistan
Beaten 5-0 by Australia and 4-0 by England in pre-tournament series and bowled out for 105 by the West Indies in their opening game, surely this time it was safe for punters to write off Pakistan?

The 2017 Champions Trophy winners refused to go down without a fight, though, winning five of their last seven completed matches including impressive victories over England, South Africa and New Zealand.

The Kiwis pipped Pakistan to a semi-final spot on net run-rate but the future is bright for the Men in Green, who have one of the world’s best ODI batsmen in 474-run top scorer Babar Azam.

Babar is still only 24 while paceman Shaheen Afridi, who took 16 wickets in just five games, is 19 and Imam-ul-Haq, Haris Sohail, Imad Wasim, Mohammad Amir and Shadab Khan provide a classy core for the future.

Mitchell Starc
Australia’s World Cup wrecking ball was named man of the tournament in 2015 and had top wicket-taker honours virtually wrapped up before the semi-finals this year.

Injury problems restricted Starc to seven ODI appearances in 2018, when his 11 wickets cost 37 runs apiece, but Australia were confident he would be ready to fire for this tournament.

So it proved, as the left-arm quick claimed 26 wickets in nine group games, demolishing the West Indies with 5-46 and recording combined figures of 9-69 in victories over England and New Zealand at Lord’s.

There have been some superb displays of fast bowling at this World Cup but Starc’s perfect yorker to dismiss Ben Stokes in the group win over England is a leading contender for ball of the tournament.

New Zealand’s seamers
New Zealand’s surprise run to the final has been based on the understated brilliance of captain Kane Williamson and his bowling attack is cut from the same cloth.

Trent Boult is the closest thing the Black Caps have to a superstar bowler and the left-armer is finishing the tournament in style with 13 wickets in his last five games.

Lockie Ferguson and Matt Henry caused more problems than Boult in the Black Caps’ early fixtures and the pair were magnificent in Wednesday’s dramatic semi-final win over India.

Man of the match Henry dismissed both Indian openers in his first two overs while Ferguson conceded only 25 runs in his first eight stanzas before helping to close out the win at the death.

Racing Post Sport's team of the tournament
1 Rohit Sharma India
2 Jason Roy England
3 Kane Williamson New Zealand
4 Babar Azam Pakistan
5 Shakib Al Hasan Bangladesh
6 Ben Stokes England
7 Alex Carey (wk) Australia
8 Mitchell Starc Australia
9 Jofra Archer England
10 Shaheen Afridi Pakistan
11 Jasprit Bumrah India

The second 11
Jonny Bairstow, David Warner, Joe Root, Virat Kohli, Mushfiqur Rahim (wk), Jimmy Neesham, Chris Woakes, Mohammad Amir, Trent Boult, Lockie Ferguson, Imran Tahir

The misses

Glenn Maxwell
In March, Maxwell helped Australia seal a 5-0 ODI series victory over Pakistan in the UAE, scoring 71 off 55 balls, 98 off 82, and 70 off 33 in the last three games.

Hopes were high that he could provide the spark for a powerful but orthodox Australia batting unit.

A meagre 177 runs from ten innings was a disappointment, therefore, especially in comparison to his 2015 World Cup feats: 324 runs in six knocks at a strike-rate of 182.

Maxwell had been 10-1 third-favourite with bet365 to score the fastest fifty at the World Cup and 16-1 with Betfair to be player of the tournament.

He showed glimpses of his spectacular batting talent – his tournament strike-rate was 150 – but didn’t stay at the crease long enough to make a serious impact and an unbeaten 46 against Sri Lanka was as good as it got.

The Big Show’s campaign tailed off with scores of 12, one, 12 and 22 in Australia’s last four games and his 49 overs of off-spin failed to yield a single wicket.

Rashid Khan
The Afghanistan leg-spinner has left a trail of bamboozled batsmen behind him in T20 leagues around the world but he struggled to live up to expectations in his first World Cup.

He didn’t bowl badly, apart from figures of 0-110 in nine overs against an Eoin Morgan-inspired England, but he was an expensive player to follow in match and long-term markets.

Rashid was just 6-5 to be the Afghans’ top tournament wicket-taker but he ended up fifth. A total of six scalps in eight innings ensured a hefty profit for anyone following Racing Post Sport’s Liam Flin’s advice to sell Rashid’s World Cup wickets at 14 with Sporting Index.

At the age of 20, the leggie should have more successful tournaments ahead of him but his wicket-taking threat has undoubtedly been reduced as batsmen are reluctant to take risks against the Afghan icon.

Fakhar Zaman
The Pakistan opener made his ODI debut in England in the 2017 Champions Trophy, scoring a dream century in the final victory over India at The Oval.

A stellar series in Zimbabwe in 2018 propelled him to 1,000 ODI runs in a record 18 innings but the aggressive left-hander was exposed by better bowling attacks at the World Cup.

He scored 138 at the Rose Bowl in the pre-tournament series against England but his other four scores in that series were three, two, 57 and nought, and the 4-1 shot never looked like obliging in the top Pakistan tournament runscorer heat.

Zaman made 186 runs in eight innings with his only half-century coming in the defeat to India at Old Trafford.

His tournament petered out with scores of nine against New Zealand, nought against Afghanistan and 13 against Bangladesh and he is in danger of becoming the latest promising Pakistan batsman to fall by the wayside.

South Africa
Imran Tahir dismissed England’s Jonny Bairstow with the second ball of the tournament but things swiftly went downhill for South Africa.

They were fourth in the ante-post betting but their first seven games yielded just three points, from a win over Afghanistan and a washout against the West Indies (when they were already in trouble at 29-2).

Once the pressure was off they beat Sri Lanka and Australia in their last two games with skipper Faf du Plessis scoring 96 not out and 100.

However, those knocks were the Proteas’ highest individual scores of a dismal campaign and, despite some decent bowling displays, their batting unit never looked like posting competitive totals on a regular basis.

Record-breaking batting
India’s Rohit Sharma scored five centuries in nine innings, a World Cup record, and Eoin Morgan smashed 17 sixes against Afghanistan but in general the expected dominance of bat over ball didn’t materialise.

All the pre-tournament talk was of teams scoring 500-plus and batsmen making double-centuries but the 10.30am starts, overcast conditions and some top-class bowling kept scores relatively modest.

Chasing targets has proved far more difficult than anticipated too and 17 of the last 22 games have been won by the team batting first.

Betfred offered 9-4 about any player scoring 200 in an innings but David Warner’s 166 against Bangladesh is the highest individual score of the tournament.

And it’s been a frustrating World Cup for buyers of ton-ups on the spreads as 16 of the 31 centuries have been 107 or under. Betfair’s total tournament centuries line was 42.5.

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