Published by: Prakhar Sachdeo
Babar Azam is the No. 1-ranked batter in the ODI format, the captain of Pakistan and the team's most crucial anchor batsman. A disciplined, balanced and well-poised right-hander, he averages better than 58 and a strike rate of close to 90. He is dangerous against pace or spin bowling. He was the fastest batter to accumulate 5,000 ODI runs.
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The tall left-arm paceman’s role in the white ball formats is to bowl full, at the stumps and swing it late at the start of the powerplays. He finished player of the tournament with 22 wickets when Australia won the title on home soil eight years ago. Starc, 33, backed that up 27 wickets in England four years ago, before Australia’s title defense ended in the semifinals. His 49 wickets in 18 World Cup games have come at an average of 14.8.
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The 36-year-old allrounder will be playing his fifth World Cup. He's the No. 1 allrounder in international ODI cricket with more than 7,300 runs batting mostly in the middle order and collecting more than 300 wickets with his slow left-arm orthodox bowling. Combative with bat and ball, he’s only the third cricketer — after Sanath Jayasuriya and Shahid Afridi — to go past 7,000 runs and 300 wickets. Shakib believes the ODI format is his country's best chance of success in international cricket.
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One of India's finest and most competitive cricketers, Kohli will be wanting to replicate the outcome of the great Sachin Tendulkar's World Cup appearance on home soil in 2011. He's the only active player who features in any of the ICC’s all-time top 10 lists. He was already an established top-order batter when he made his ODI World Cup debut in 2011, when Tendulkar capped his remarkable career with a first world title in the format. In his three World Cups, he has played 26 games and scored two tons, averages 46.81.
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One of the players from the Associate Nations to watch. His 5-52 bowling pace and 123 off 92 deliveries batting at No. 4 against Scotland in the qualifying tournament in Zimbabwe helped usher Netherlands into the World Cup and put him in rarified air in ODI cricket. Viv Richards is one of the only three previous players to achieve that — scoring a century and taking five wickets — in a one-day international. The 23-year-old allrounder has cricketing pedigree, too. His father, Tim, played in three World Cups and claimed the huge wicket of Tendulkar among his 4-35 against India in 2003.
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