Sportskeeda Cricket Awards: Top 10 ODI batsmen of 2017

#4 Ross Taylor

One of the players who redefined themselves in the last 12-18 months is former New Zealand skipper Ross Taylor. The right-hander faced a pale patch last year but bounced back in style by finishing 2017 as his team's leading run scorer in ODIs, almost 400 runs more than the second best from the Blackcaps, his skipper Kane Williamson.

2017 was kind to him as he scored as many as 968 runs in 20 matches with two centuries and seven fifties - joint-highest by any batsman along with Virat Kohli, Joe Root, Quinton de Kock and Ajinkya Rahane.

The most important aspect of Taylor's good run was the way he scored his runs. He was very consistent as he averaged over 60 this year and played the role of sheet anchor to perfection. He scored his runs at a strike-rate of 82 with just one six, the least by a batsman with at least 350 runs this year.