2 Indian stars who won the Player of the Tournament award in World Cup
Winning the World Cup is a dream of every cricketer. Almost every cricketer grows up thinking about the moment when he will help his team to lift the much-coveted trophy but only very few players realise the dream.
There have been instances when a tournament got famous for the exploits of one player as in the case of 1999 World Cup held in England. Lance Klusener scored 250 runs and took 17 wickets from 8 matches in the tournament.
Sanath Jayasuriya took the cricketing world by storm through his performances in the 1996 World Cup. There have been few Indian players as well who performed exceedingly well and received the Player of the Tournament award in the history of the ODI World Cup.
#2 Yuvraj Singh - 2011 World Cup
Yuvraj Singh was the chief architect of arguably the biggest win in Indian cricket history. It was a turbulent phase of the left-hander's personal life due to his health issues. Yet, he churned out a humongous effort to help India win the trophy.
Yuvraj Singh scored 362 runs and took 15 wickets in the tournament to win four Player of the Match awards. He became the first all-rounder to score 300-plus runs and take 15 wickets in a single edition of the World Cup. Riding on his heroics, India won the World Cup trophy after a long gap of 28 years. The Player of the Tournament award for the 2011 World Cup is the highlight of the illustrious ODI career of Yuvraj Singh.
#1 Sachin Tendulkar - 2003 World Cup
Sachin Tendulkar has the record of scoring most runs in World Cup matches. He has amassed 2278 runs in 45 matches. The legendary right-hander has appeared in a record six World Cup tournaments during his career. He played his first World Cup in 1992 in Australia where he was the second highest run-scorer for India behind Mohammad Azharuddin.
Although Tendulkar scored a lot of runs in almost all the World Cup tournaments he played in, his best tournament in terms of run scoring and impact was the 2003 World Cup held in South Africa. The Mumbaikar scored a mammoth 673 runs from 11 matches and helped India reach the final of the tournament where they eventually lost to Australia. Fittingly, he received the Player of the Tournament award for his consistent performances.