ODI XI of 2018
The year 2018 has entered its last month with no further ODIs assigned in the month of December for any team. The year started with a single objective for all the teams; to kick-start the preparations for the World Cup and get the combinations right. The qualifiers were one of the major highlights of the year where Afghanistan bounced back after defeats and trounced Zimbabwe and Ireland to book a spot in the World Cup. Not only that, but they also beat West Indies to win the qualifying tournament.
As the World Cup nears, most teams have zeroed in on their combinations and will look to the first half to 2019 as preparations for the World Cup. And there have been some teams who have highly depended on certain individuals. 2018 saw some brilliant individual performances and here we look at such players who form the ODI XI of the year:
Openers - Rohit Sharma and Jonny Bairstow
Only three players have scored over 1,000 ODI runs in 2018, one of them is Rohit Sharma, who is second only behind Virat Kohli on the list of most ODI runs in the calendar year. He has scored 1030 runs from 19 matches at an average of 73.57 and a strike rate of 100 with five centuries and three fifties.
So his inclusion in this XI is a no-brainer considering his incredible numbers in the calendar year. There have been some exceptional openers this year apart from Rohit, but the one who stood out among them was Jonny Bairstow. Like Rohit, Bairstow was not a regular opener, but once given a chance at the top, he transformed into a different batsman.
Bairstow has 1025 runs from 22 matches, at an average of 46.59 and a strike rate of 118.22, the highest among all other batsmen. With 4 hundreds and 2 fifties, Bairstow is the third highest run-getter this year.
Shikhar Dhawan, Fakhar Zaman, Tamim Iqbal, and Jason Roy were also brilliant. But it is Bairstow who partners Rohit at the top.