ICC U-19 World Cup 2018: Top 5 performers from the tournament

#4 Alick Athanaze (West Indies):

Alick Athanaze: Brian Lara 2.0

Defending champions from the 2016 ICC U19 World Cup, West Indies came into the tournament as strong contenders for the title but could only muster a performance good enough for 10th place.

While the team could not perform well as a whole unit, there was one player who kept the West Indian flag flying high and that player was Alick Athanaze, a left-handed middle order batsman who finished as the tournament's highest run-scorer.

Athanaze started his tournament in a relatively quiet fashion, with a score of 26 against the hosts New Zealand, but in the next two matches he put his talent on full display with innings of 76 and 116 not out against South Africa and Kenya respectively.

As the West Indies team had failed to qualify for the quarterfinals they were moved to the plate division where they had fight with other teams who too had failed to qualify for the knockout round to determine their final placement.

In his quarter final against Ireland, Athanaze got out cheaply for a score of 3 but he instantly made up for his disappointing performance with an all round effort against Canada in the semi-final where he scored 87 runs and bagged 2 wickets. Against Sri Lanka he scored an unbeaten knock of 110, albeit in a losing cause.

Overall, Athanaze finished his tournament with 418 runs at an average of 104.5 with 2 centuries and 2 fifties.