Now that the Champions League 2011 is over, it is time to look at the top performers in the tournament. As usual, we rely on the Win Probability Added (WPA) statistic for this analysis. A quick glance at the tournament WPA table tells us the following:
- West Indies has got talent: The top 3 players in the WPA table are from West Indies, neither of whose teams reached the knock-out stage: Kevon Cooper, DJ Bravo and Ravi Rampaul. Rampaul was also the highest wicket taker in the tournament with 12 wickets. Bravo and Cooper have modest overall statistics, but their clutch performances in crucial situations give them a higher WPA score. Cooper is definitely a great talent to look out for: just 22 and yet to play for the West Indies national side, he performed excellently with both the bat and the ball. Just his bowling WPA would have had been good enough to place him second overall. He also accumulated 0.767 batting WPA, good for 6th overall.
The fourth West Indian to feature in the top 10 is Sunil Narine, the joint second highest wicket taker in the tournament. Just like Cooper, Narine also displayed a good all round performance in the tournament. Clearly, there is no dearth of talent in West Indies. If they can get their act together, they can again become a formidable side just like they were in the 80s.
- Malinga richly deserved to be the man of the tournament. He has the highest WPA of the players whose teams reached the knock-out stage. Joint second highest wicket taker (with Narine), and third in terms of bowling WPA, Malinga also played a vital role as a batsman in one of the games in the league stage, accumulating 0.480 batting WPA in total. He was no doubt the most valuable player of the eventual champions, Mumbai Indians.
- The emergence of the all-rounders. All rounders were threatened to become extinct species with the advent of the T20 cricket, but surprisingly in the Champions League there were many players who performed well both with both bat and ball (in terms of WPA at least). Apart from Cooper, Bravo, Narine and Malinga who have already been mentioned before, other players with solid WPA scores in both batting and bowling are: Vettori (0.411 batting WPA, 0.658 bowling WPA and he really led the Bangalore team from the front), Abdul Razzaq (albeit in only two appearances in the tournament), Roelof van der Merwe and Harbhajan Singh (who also did an admirable job as a captain). The all-rounder species is well alive, and in fact flourishing.