The Champions Trophy gets underway this week and with that in mind we have been looking at the Hero Caribbean Premier League players that you should be keeping an eye on throughout the tournament. Here are the five players that we are most excited about watching in England in June.
Chris Lynn
Chris Lynn comes into the Champions Trophy on the back of a fantastic Indian Premier League that saw him score 295 runs at an average of 49.16 with a ridiculous strike rate of 180. He will be returning to the Guyana Amazon Warriors team for this year’s Hero CPL and he will be looking forward to bringing that form into the Champions Trophy and then when he arrives in the Caribbean.
Lynn’s chances in the Australian set-up have been limited to just one ODI and five T20s so far, but his IPL form should give him a chance to showcase his talents in England this summer.
Hashim Amla
Fresh from becoming the fastest ever to 7,000 runs in ODI cricket, Trinbago Knight Riders’ Hashim Amla will be hoping for a big Champions Trophy after the disappointment of the 2-1 series loss to England in the ODI series that took place this month. The opener has 24 ODI hundreds and averages over 50 in the format after 153 matches for South Africa.
While we live in the age of massive shots and brutal hitting, the way Amla goes about things is a bit different. He is a classy batsman that can muscle the ball over the ropes, but more often than not he is a player that looks to play “proper” shots that are about timing and placement. He has a track record of success in England, not least his 311 not out at the Oval in a Test match in 2012, and if South Africa are going to be in the mix when it gets to the latter stages Amla will have been in the runs.
Kane Williamson
Hashim Amla is not the only batsman who can claim to be a classicist while also scoring at a very good rate. Kane Williamson of New Zealand goes about things in a very similar fashion, and has brilliant success in both ODI and T20 cricket doing just that. He has an amazing ODI average of 45.9 with eight hundreds – and he has the small matter of 33 wickets in the format as well.
The New Zealand captain will be one of the leading run-scorers in the tournament and his team will be right up there come the final stages. The Barbados Tridents will be hoping for something very similar at the Hero CPL this year.
Shoaib Malik
There is nothing flashy about the way Shoaib Malik goes about his cricket, it is all about being brilliantly effective. That is one of the main reasons that the Barbados Tridents have retained him for this year’s CPL. Shoaib has a good chance of passing 7,000 ODI runs during the Champions Trophy and Pakistan will be hoping that he can add to his eight hundreds in the format in the process.
His bowling is not to be underestimated either. He has 153 ODI wickets with a superb economy rate of 4.66. He is one of those players that doesn’t get anywhere near as much credit as he deserves.
David Miller
”If it’s in the arc it’s out the park”. That simple philosophy has seen David Miller become one of the most sought after batsmen in T20 cricket around the world. The St Lucia Stars have retained his services for yet another year and he his well placed to light up the Champions Trophy as South Africa try to claim victory after going out in the semi-final in the 2013 tournament.
Miller is brutal on anything that gives him the room to free his arms, and any bowler that thinks you can bowl short to him will be watching the ball sail over the mid-wicket boundary for six. Oh, and he is absolute gun fielder.