Bangladesh opener Tamim Iqbal on Monday was selected in the best XI of the ICC Champions Trophy for his outstanding batting in the competition.
The ICC jury members chose 11 players from five countries and gave the responsibility of the captaincy to winning captain Sarfraz Ahmed, the skipper of Pakistan.
The jury picked players from four semi-finalists and New Zealand’s Kane Williamson was chosen as the 12th man but there was no player from South Africa, Sri Lanka and Australia, the teams that were eliminated from the first round.
The side was filled with maximum four from champions Pakistan, including Sarfraz, three from runners-up India and other three from English and Tamim from Bangladesh.
Tamim Iqbal showed amazing consistency with his bat as he scored 128 in the opening game against hosts England before making 95 in the next match against Australia.
Tamim’s only failure was his duck against New Zealand but he scored 70 in the semi-final against India though his untimely dismissal after a big partnership with Mushfiqur Rahim saw Bangladesh collapsed to a lowly total.
Tamim ended with 293 runs in the tournament from four game and only two other players, Indian openers Shikhar Dhawan (338) and Rohit Sharma (304) scored more than the southpaw though both of them played five games each.
The side was consisted of six batsman, one wicketkeeper, three seamers and one-spinner.
Dhawan, who had already won the Golden Bat for finishing as the most successful batsman, was chosen in the side with Fakhar Zaman as his opening partner.
Fakhar, who made his debut in the tournament, scored 252 runs from four matches by scoring two impactful fifties and a maiden century against India that gave him the man of the final award.
Tamim was selected for the one-down and Indian skipper Virat Kohli, who made 258 at the highest average of 129 despite making just five in the final, was chosen as number four.
Joe Root, who made as much runs as Kohli, was placed at number five
and his team-mate Ben Stokes was given the sixth spot for his 184 runs with bat and three wickets with bowl.
Another of their team-mate Adil Rashid was chosen as the solo spinner for picking up seven wickets with an economy rate of 4.73.
Fast bowlers Junaid Khan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Hassan Ali shared 28 wickets between them in the tournament and they were given the responsibility of the attack along with Rashid.
Hassan, who was adjudicated as the man of the series and also got Golden Ball as the best bowler, got 13 wickets in five matches while Junaid and Bhuvneshwar got eight and seven wickets respectively.
Sarfraz was chosen as the captain following his inspirational leadership that was the cornerstone of his team’s 180-run victory over India in front of a full house.
Pakistan had started disastrously when it suffered a 124-run thrashing at the hands of India, before it bounced back to defeat South Africa by 19 runs, Sri Lanka by three wickets and England in the semi-final by eight wickets.
Sarfraz also won the Player of the Match award in the match against Sri Lanka when Pakistan, chasing 237 runs for victory, had slipped from 74 for one to 162 for seven. Sarfraz, who came out to bat at number six with the scoreboard reading 110 for four, returned unbeaten on 61 from 79 balls with five fours.
The side was selected by a jury of cricket experts, which included former captains Michael Atherton of England, India’s Sourav Ganguly, Ramiz Raja of Pakistan, Lawrence Booth (Editor, Wisden Almanack and cricket writer, The Mail) ,Julian Guyer (cricket correspondent, Agence France-Presse).
ICC General Manager – Cricket, Geoff Allardice, acted as the chairman of the jury.
Source: New Age
