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Leading lights of ICC Men’s T20 World Cup

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5 years ago

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The Sri Lankan great sits third all time in terms of runs scored (897) and also contributed to the addition of a new word to cricket’s lexicon, and a new shot to a batter’s armoury, with the ‘Dilscoop’ that he mastered in 2009. (Getty images)

The measure of great players is the ability to perform on the biggest stage and in T20 cricket, it does not come any bigger than the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.

Over the course of the previous six editions, there have been many stunning individual performances.

Taken as a whole though, it is no surprise that the players who have performed the most consistently since 2007 are also among the very best players the game has seen.

So, as we prepare for the start of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021, we take a look at 10 players who have had a huge impact on the history of the tournament with their consistent excellence:

 

Shahid Afridi (Pakistan) – 39 wickets and 546 runs in 34 matches 

The greatest wicket-taker in the history of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi is one of the poster boys of the format capable of having an impact with bat and ball.

His crowning achievement came in 2009 when he inspired Pakistan to the title, earning Player of the Match honours for his performance in the eight-wicket win over Sri Lanka in the final.

In that game Afridi took one for 20 with a miserly spell before hammering an unbeaten 54 off 40 balls to see his side home.

His 39 wickets are the most of any player in the tournament, while he is just outside the top ten all-time runs scorers with 546, and only Tillakaratne Dilshan has played more than Afridi’s 34 matches.

 

Shakib Al Hasan (Bangladesh) – 567 runs and 30 wickets in 25 matches 

The only player on this list who has not reached at the least the semi-finals of the competition, it is mark of Shakib Al Hasan’s achievements that he has been so successful despite playing in a struggling side.

One of just eight men who will be playing in 2021 having also featured in the inaugural tournament, Shakib has been one of the great all-rounders in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.

He joins Afridi as the only players to have scored at least 500 runs and taken 30 wickets in the tournament, and if his performances in England two years ago are anything to go by, his taste for the big occasion is only increasing.

 

Samuel Badree (West Indies) –24 wickets in 15 matches 

Not quite as prolific as some players on this list, but West Indian spinner Samuel Badree had a remarkable impact on the competition between 2012 and 2016.

In tandem with Sunil Narine for the first two of those tournaments, Badree showed just how dangerous spinners can be in T20 cricket, opening the bowling for the West Indies.

His bowling average of 13.58 is the best in the tournament’s history, while an economy rate of 5.52 is second only to Narine.

When you consider those figures, it is no surprise that West Indies enjoyed great success during that period, with Badree crucial to the triumphs in 2012 and 2016.

 

AB de Villiers (South Africa) – 717 runs and 30 catches in 30 matches 

AB de Villiers will go down as one of, if not South Africa’s greatest player across all three formats, and he certainly shone on the global stage in ICC Men’s T20 World Cups.

His 717 runs are good enough for fifth all time and of that top five, only Chris Gayle has a better strike rate than De Villiers’ 143.4.

Of course, the Proteas superstar offered more than just his batting. Whether it was as a wicket-keeper or just an outfielder, he influenced the game like few others.

De Villiers’ 23 catches as an outfielder are eight more than anyone else in the tournament, with seven more and a pair of stumpings when he had the gloves on.

 

Tillakaratne Dilshan (Sri Lanka) – 897 runs in 35 matches 

The 2021 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup will be the first tournament in which Tillakaratne Dilshan will not feature, having played more matches than anyone in the competition’s history.

The Sri Lankan great sits third all time in terms of runs scored (897) and also contributed to the addition of a new word to cricket’s lexicon, and a new shot to a batter’s armoury, with the ‘Dilscoop’ that he mastered in 2009.

He was outstanding in that tournament, including an unbeaten 96 in the semi-final against the West Indies as he made 317 runs to be named Player of the Tournament. The fact that Pakistan removed him for a duck is probably a big factor in why Sri Lanka lost the final.

 

Chris Gayle (West Indies) –920 runs in 28 matches 

The man born to play T20 cricket, Chris Gayle has made the format his own and ‘The Universe Boss’ will look to make it a hat-trick of titles in the UAE and Oman.

Curiously, Gayle has scored three and four in the two finals he has played so far, but the Windies have won them both anyway.

In the other 26 matches he has played, he has racked up 913 runs, second only to Mahela Jayawardene. By the end of the 2021 tournament, Gayle will hope to have joined Jayawardene in the 1000-run club.

As destructive as they come, Gayle has smashed 60 sixes in the tournament, nearly double the next most from Yuvraj Singh with 33, and is the only player to have notched two ICC Men’s T20 World Cup centuries.

 

Mahela Jayawardene (Sri Lanka) – 1016 runs in 31 matches 

No-one has scored more runs at ICC Men’s T20 World Cups than Sri Lankan great Mahela Jayawardene, the only player to have topped 1000 runs in the tournament.

He played in every competition from 2007 to 2014, bowing out in style as he helped Sri Lanka claim the title in his final appearance.

In that match he made a run-a-ball 24 as Sri Lanka chased down India’s total of 130/4 to win the tournament for the first time, becoming the first player to make it four figures in the process.

Among other highlights, he enjoyed a purple patch at the 2010 T20 World Cup when he scored 81, 100 and 98 not out in three successive innings as Sri Lanka reached the semi-finals.

 

Virat Kohli (India) – 777 runs in 16 matches 

The list of candidates for the best player never to have won the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup starts and ends with Virat Kohli. The India skipper averages an absurd 86.33 in the 16 matches he has played.

With a half-century in more than half his innings, Kohli has been as consistent a player as the tournament has seen.

He has been named Player of the Tournament in each of the last two editions of the competition, averaging more than 100 in both editions, while his lowest score in a knockout game is the 72 not out he scored against South Africa in a semi-final win in 2014.

 

Lasith Malinga (Sri Lanka) – 38 wickets in 31 matches 

The most prolific wicket-taker in the history of T20 internationals, Lasith Malinga is second only to Shahid Afridi at the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.

The master of the yorker, Malinga was the ultimate death bowler, capable of crushing toes and splaying wickets in the deciding moments of matches.

It is also a testament to his importance within the Sri Lankan team that Malinga was captain of the side that won the title in 2014, in a squad featuring the likes of Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara.

And even in a match where he did not take a wicket, the way Malinga restricted India to just 11 runs from overs 18 and 20 of their innings in the final, was crucial to the eventual six-wicket success.

 

Kevin Pietersen (England) – 580 runs in 15 matches 

In the vein of Samuel Badree, Kevin Pietersen’s influence on the tournament was relatively short, but his star shone incredibly bright.

The driving force behind England’s march to glory in 2010 in the Caribbean, Pietersen’s 580 runs in just 15 innings is a phenomenal return.

Only Kohli and Mike Hussey average more than Pietersen’s 44.61 by players with at least ten innings, and his strike-rate of 148.33 is the best of anyone in the top ten all-time run scorers.

He also has the silverware to go with it – being named Player of the Tournament as an aggressive England side powered their way to the title.

He scored 248 runs in that tournament, capping off a run of three editions in which he was England’s most devastating batter.


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Sports

Why Risk Mendis’ Purple Patch?

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1 hour ago

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2026/05/13

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Kusal Mendis

After years of disappointing returns, off-field controversies, lengthy suspensions and a bad-boy image among cricket fans, Kusal Mendis seems to have finally turned a corner. With a young daughter now at the centre of his world, Mendis appears to have realized that there’s more to life than pubs and nightclubs. The hours in the gym have increased significantly and so has his commitment to the game.

The turning point came in England last year. Every player dreams of playing a Test match at Lord’s, the Home of Cricket. Mendis, one of the senior players in the side, was dropped for the big game and it hurt him deeply.

Not many approved of the move. Former captain Duleep Mendis called it a poor decision and several others echoed similar sentiments. But the selectors knew exactly what they were doing. They wanted to prick Mendis’ ego and jolt him out of his comfort zone.

He returned for the next Test in a new role as wicketkeeper-batsman and Sri Lanka went onto win the game. Pathum Nissanka’s century grabbed most of the headlines, but it was Mendis who laid the platform. Chasing only 219, he counter-attacked aggressively, forcing England to spread the field and eventually playing right into Sri Lanka’s hands.

Since then, he has been a revelation in limited-overs cricket as well, forging a formidable opening partnership with Nissanka. His wicketkeeping too has been spotless.

People may have plenty to say about Mendis, but one thing that has never been in doubt is that he is a team man. He has been more than willing to do the hard yards while younger players like Pathum Nissanka, Charith Asalanka and Kamindu Mendis enjoy the limelight.

Such has been his form in the PSL that he finished as the tournament’s second highest run scorer, playing a major role in helping his franchise win the title.

Against that backdrop, the national selectors are contemplating handing him the white-ball captaincy. But Mendis already has enough on his plate as opener and wicketkeeper. Why burden him further with captaincy responsibilities?

Charith Asalanka, meanwhile, has been groomed for leadership since the age of 17. The selectors already blundered by taking the T20 captaincy away from him. Now, with the 50-over World Cup a year away, they seem keen to strip him of the ODI captaincy too.

Their previous choice for T20 captaincy, Dasun Shanaka, proved uninspiring. True, Asalanka can sometimes get under your skin with his excesses. During the recent NSL final, he was reportedly fined a significant portion of his match fee following an altercation with the umpires. But if you have entrusted a man with a job, then back him to do it.

One is reminded of what happened during the 2023 World Cup. Mendis began the tournament in blazing fashion with scores of 76 and 123 in the first two games. From the third match onwards, however, he was handed the captaincy after Shanaka’s injury and his form nosedived. He failed to score a single half-century in the next seven innings.

Ironically, the same man who now chairs the selection panel was the architect of that decision as well. Some lessons, it seems, are never learnt.

 

by Rex Clementine

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Bowlers propel Maliban Biscuits to final with a three wicket win

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1 hour ago

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2026/05/13

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15TH STAFFORD MOTORS – MCA G DIVISION T20 LEAGUE CRICKET TOURNAMENT

Chathuranga Dewapriya, Mohomed Shilmi and Chamara Rathnayake shared 8 wickets between them to help Maliban Biscuits ‘B’, defeat Star Garments by three wickets at the Thurstan College ground on Sunday [10th] and qualify for the final of the Stafford Motors sponsored MCA G division T20 cricket tournament.

Both teams qualified for the semi-final undefeated and bowling first in the semifinal, Maliban Biscuits were able to restrict the strong Star Garment team to 98 runs in 18.5 overs. Rishantha Anushka and Shakila de Silva topped the score card with 18 runs each.

In the chase, skipper Tarindu Siriwardena and Sameera Lakmal chipped in with twenty plus scores to help Maliban Biscuits cross the line with three wickets in hand and fourteen balls to spare. Dunik Perera was the pick of the bowlers for Star Garments capturing three wickets.

The second semi-final between tournament sponsors Stafford Motors and undefeated Brandix Apparel will be played on Sunday [17th] at the Nalanda College ground and the winners will meet Maliban Biscuits in the final scheduled to be played at the MCA ground on 24th May.

Brief scores:

Star Garments

98/10 in 18.5 overs [Rishantha Anushka 18, Dunik Perera 16, Shakila de Silva 18, Nawanjaya Fernando 12; Tharindu Siriwardena 1-19, Chathuranga Dewapriya 3-06, Chathuranga Alwis 1-17, Mohomad Shilmi 3-15, Chamara Rathnayake 2-21]

Maliban Biscuits

‘B’ 100/7 in 17.4 overs [Tharindu Siriwardena 21, Mohomad Shilmi 15, Sameera Lakmal 24, Manchuka Kumara 12*; Suwahas Yapa 1-16, Dunik Perera 3-22, Dhanuka Dulanjana 2-21]

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Eshan Malinga keeps getting them in the second half

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10 hours ago

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2026/05/12

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Malinga took 4 for 32 against Delhi Capitals, his best bowling figures of the season so far [BCCI]

Life keeps throwing hurdles in his way, but Eshan Malinga keeps vaulting over them. Take his February from hell. For several months, Malinga had been building up to his first ever World Cup, a dream for pretty much anyone who ever picks up a cricket ball. But a week before that World Cup, Malinga dislocated his non bowling shoulder while bowling, which the team’s medical staff have since described as a freak injury they had never seen before.

“I was devastated,” Malinga says. “On top of it being my first World Cup, it was also at home and I didn’t know when I would get that chance again. There were a few days there where I did absolutely nothing.”

And yet in mid-May, here he is grinning from atop a pile of 16 IPL wickets,  having developed a serious reputation as a reverse-swing operator. Sunrisers  Hyderabad’s  explosive batters may have seized the spotlight in this frenetic IPL, but on the bowling front, no SRH bowler has neared Malinga’s wicket haul, which is fifth best in the season overall.  In a year in which they have not had Pat Cummins for seven of their 11 matches, it is Malinga who has held down the fort,  particularly in the second half of the innings.

But trading difficulty for success is just what Malinga does. What he has long been doing. Go back eight years and Malinga had never played a hard-ball cricket match. On top of which his home district of Ratnapura – at the base of Sri Lanka’s central hills – was better known for its gems and waterfalls than cricket, never having produced a men’s international. Malinga, additionally, was not even actively trying to be a cricketer. He had moved from his first school in a village called Opanayake to Ratnapura’s Sivali Central College due to strong academic results, and found, almost by accident, that his new school had a hard-ball cricket team.

But what Malinga knew at that point was that he could bowl fast. That much had been obvious growing up in Opanayaka, where despite his mother’s occasional misgivings, Malinga was highly sought after by the organisers of the village softball team (Sri Lanka has a thriving village-level softball cricket ecosystem). And as had been the case with the better-known Malinga, this one was also aware he possessed a killer yorker – a prized asset in every form of cricket, with any kind of ball.

If he’d been on track to be a softball legend, Malinga found his horizons began to expand at a spectacular rate the moment he got a hard ball in his hands. First, his yorker and his pace began to reap big wickets in the Division Three schools competition for Sivali Central, whose coach had immediately hoisted him into the team upon seeing Malinga bowl at practice one day. Then in mid-2019, about a year into playing hard-ball cricket, came the day he still reflects on as the one that changed his cricketing life. Having missed a fast-bowling competition in Ratnapura because he had been playing for his school that day, Malinga travelled to the hill town of Badulla to bowl in the competition there, and clocked 127kph on the gun, which was enough to win him first place.

This was when he first became a blip, however faint and distant, on Sri Lanka Cricket’s radar. Visions of a cricketing life began to appear as wisps of opportunity began to materialise. The next few years, Covid-riddled though they were, became a crash course into the sport for Malinga. There were coaching camps in Colombo in which the best of the rural talent was trained up and funnelled into a programme at the next level up. There were trials for first-class teams, and eventually a fledgling domestic career.

“I don’t know how many times I came to Colombo from Ratnapura during those times,” he laughs now. “It was a lot! I would leave home at about 3am, and the bus journey to Colombo took about three-and-a-half hours. Then I’d train or play the match, and the bus back home always took longer because of traffic. So every day, I was on the road for more than seven hours.”

The Malinga who made these exhausting daily commutes was, as far as the Sri Lankan cricket system was concerned, a bowler of decent rather than blinding promise. His pace had propelled him to the top of the regional pool, but at the first-class level he was still adapting his yorker and slower ball (another weapon he had developed in his softball days). If he needed another gear, Malinga found it – again almost by accident – sometime in 2022.

“I was playing an Under-23 three-day tournament, and I remember that being the first time I really started reverse-swinging the ball,” he says. “Coaches had anyway told me that with my action and my pace, it should be possible. But it started almost automatically. It’s not something I had to learn.

“But it wasn’t that easy, because it was a long process to learn how to control it. To get reverse swing, you have to release the ball at a different point than a straight ball, because you want it to still hit the stumps when it is swinging. So I scuffed up a lot of balls and trained hard to get that line right.”

And so, the Malinga that emerged at the end of 2022 had sharp enough pace, an excellent yorker, a developing slower ball, mountains of homespun tenacity, and had also discovered that he can naturally reverse-swing the ball earlier in an innings than most. You could have seen where this is going, right? All the ingredients of an ace white-ball bowler were there. And Malinga was already a master of turning wisps of opportunities into tangible advances. Over the next three years, he’d land a spot in the national fast-bowling academy, use that as a trampoline to impress in an Emerging Teams three-dayer against Bangladesh, and from there bounce into a stint at the MRF Pace Academy in 2024, before on the franchise side of things parlaying a trial at Rajasthan Royals at Kumar Sangakkara’s invitation into a decent run at the SA20 for Paarl Royals.

Having leapt up to the fringes of the Sri Lanka team over the past 18 months, Malinga has at this IPL now seized another unusual chance. The square at SRH’s home stadium is among the barest and most abrasive in the league, and Malinga’s reverse swing has prospered upon it. Of his 16 wickets this season, 11 have come at home. In the second half of the innings, when the ball is most likely to reverse, Malinga’s economy rate is 8.37 at a venue where runs have been scored at 9.38 in that period this season.

Malinga had put in a robust 2025 season for SRH as well, so there is a body of work emerging there. Perhaps this is why this year, SRH’s bowling plans have tended to follow the contours of Malinga’s own game.

“After six overs the ball gets damaged here, so we needed to make use of that. When I bowled at practice, the ball reversed, so I think a plan emerged where we were going to use the scuffed up ball and take advantage of that.

“In the first powerplay the ball comes on to the bat nicely here. After that we try to get the advantage of having an older ball. We’ve got bowlers who bowl 140kph-plus, and we have Pat Cummins, who also reverses the ball. So we make sure to look after the ball in a way that will give us reverse.”

At 25, eight years into a serious cricket career, Malinga sees himself as a work in progress. He wants to work on his powerplay bowling. His variations, he thinks, still need some work. He’d like to play Tests, where his reverse swing could really stretch its legs. And, oh, he is still waiting to play that first World Cup.

Even here, his keen nose for opportunity leads him. He points out through the course of our conversation that where the three previous World Cups had been played with a new ball at either end being used right through the innings, the next World Cup, in 2027, will feature rules that seem at least partially designed to enhance reverse swing, an older ball more suited to the craft now available towards the end of the innings.

He isn’t even a sure-fire pick in Sri Lanka’s ODI XI just yet, so this is just a flicker of an opportunity for now. But having made the journey from the village of Opanayaka to the most raucous cricketing showpiece on the planet, Malinga knows just what to do with those.

[Cricinfo]

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