Top 5 Bowling Performances in the Men’s T20 World Cup
The dust and noise refuse to settle as celebrations from the double World Cup winners (Men and Women), West Indies, continues. Interestingly, contrary to expectations, this was a balanced World Cup, in that not all the pitches were batting friendly. There were some really good bowling performances on all tracks.
Mohammad Nabi of Afghanistan was the surprise table topper with 12 wickets, owing to the three extra games his team had to play in the qualifiers. If the qualifiers were excluded, Mitchell Santner of New Zealand emerges as the leading wicket-taker with 10 wickets in 5 games along with Ish Sodhi also of New Zealand and David Willey of England.
Here, we take a look though, at the best individual performances in this T20 World Cup with the ball that don't fade away, just like the Axe Signature line of body perfumes. The factors include number of wickets, economy, importance of the match, batting strength of the opponent and the track on which the bowling figures were registered.
Mustafizur Rahman, 4-0-22-5 v New Zealand, Kolkata
Mustafizur, the 20-year-old Bangladesh left arm fast medium bowler had a dream game against a powerful New Zealand batting line-up on a good Eden Gardens wicket. Returning figures of 5-22, Mustafizur ensured Bangladesh were chasing a sub-150 total although they fared really badly in the second innings with the bat.
Mustafizur picked up the openers at critical junctures before returning back at the depth and picking wickets off successive balls in the final over of the innings to register one of only two five wicket hauls at this World Cup. He managed to do this at an economy rate of 5.5 while bowling in the power-play and at the death and having just recovered from an injury in time for the match. Most of the wickets, unsurprisingly came off his slow cutters.