Year in Review: Flop ODI XI of year 2013

10) Wahab Riaz

Wahab Riaz

(Matches- 14, Wickets- 8, Average- 66.50, BBI- 2-42)

Part I: Wahab Riaz in 2013 was everything that a bowler shouldn’t be. He ran in hard and bowled utter nonsense in that ridiculous slinging action of his. Like most Pakistani bowlers, his bowling promise was visible only when he played against India but unlike other Pakistani bowlers, he was dropped from the team purely because of cricketing reasons. Out of the 14 matches that he played in, he went wicketless in 8 of them and in the momentary instances when he did pick wickets, this is what happened to him. Profligacy at its best.

Part II: Bowlers who had a better bowling average than Wahab Riaz in 2013, i) Hamilton Masakadza, ii) Suresh Raina and iii) Xavier Doherty.

11) Vinay Kumar

Vinay Kumar

(Matches- 9, Wickets- 5, Average- 49.80, BBI- 2/50)

Vinay Kumar is anti-excitement. He is the poster boy of Indian medium-fast bowling going wrong and it is completely unnatural and unbelievable to believe that he has 279 first-class wickets at a bowling average of 24.84. Besides being completely Vinay Kumar in his approach in 2013, he bowled the 5th worst bowling figures in the history of ODI cricket and the worst by an Indian when he went for 102 runs off his 9 overs against Australia at Bangalore in a match India luckily went on to win. Probability wise, he had a 0.001 % chance (out of 3450 ODI matches) of bowling such a spell and being so appalling but Vinay Kumar made sure he bagged it. If Vinay Kumar can be the fast bowler of India, anyone can, just about anyone.

Notable exceptions: Graeme Smith, Younis Khan, Umar Amin, Tim Bresnan, Nathan McCullum, Jeevan Mendis, Kamran Akmal, Matthew Wade.

Worst team of the year: West Indies (Played- 24, Won- 9, Lost- 13, Tied- 2, W/L ratio- 0.69)

If you feel any other player should have made the cut/drop, feel free to post it in the comments section.