Srinivas Bhogle and Purnendu Maji present Rediff.com's Most Valuable Players after the India-England ODI series.
These days we forget ODI series almost as soon as they end.
But the India-England series that ended on January 22 will probably be remembered longer because we had pulsating cricket with both teams quite evenly matched.
The Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the series was Kedar Jadhav (MVPI of 312).
Jadhav is also a handy wicket-taking spinner, so we should expect to see his name more often on MVPI lists in the future.
But this time it was all about his batting. With an aggregate of 232 runs at a lofty strike rate of 144, Jadhav was an easy winner.
Recall that the MVPI formula picks out batsmen who score a lot of runs at a high strike rate, bowlers who take a lot of wickets at a low economy rate, and fielders who take the most catches or participate in run outs.
MVPI expresses a player's overall batting + bowling + fielding performance in terms of a 'run equivalent.'
Jason Roy (MVPI 282) scored almost as many runs as Jadhav (220 runs), but he is second on the table because he scored them at a more modest (but still impressive) strike rate of 116.
Hardik Pandya (256) and Ben Stokes (242) also figure in the top 5 because of their all-round performances (see Table 1).
Table 1: Most Valuable Players in the India-England series
| Rank | Player | Team | Runs | 4s | 6s | SR | Wkts | Eco | Mat | MVPI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kedar Jadhav | INDIA | 232 | 27 | 6 | 144.1 | 0 | 7.6 | 3 | 312 |
| 2 | Jason Roy | ENGLAND | 220 | 31 | 3 | 115.8 | 0 | - | 3 | 282 |
| 3 | Hardik Pandya | INDIA | 115 | 9 | 4 | 129.2 | 5 | 6.2 | 3 | 256 |
| 4 | Yuvraj Singh | INDIA | 210 | 28 | 5 | 107.1 | 0 | 6.2 | 3 | 251 |
| 5 | Ben Stokes | ENGLAND | 120 | 6 | 7 | 146.3 | 5 | 7.4 | 3 | 242 |
| 6 | M S Dhoni | INDIA | 165 | 12 | 7 | 100.6 | 0 | - | 3 | 238 |
| 7 | Virat Kohli | INDIA | 185 | 18 | 5 | 106.9 | 0 | - | 3 | 231 |
| 8 | Eoin Morgan | ENGLAND | 173 | 10 | 9 | 114.6 | 0 | - | 3 | 220 |
| 9 | Chris Woakes | ENGLAND | 48 | 6 | 1 | 165.5 | 6 | 6.4 | 3 | 188 |
| 10 | Ravindra Jadeja | INDIA | 39 | 5 | 1 | 134.5 | 4 | 5.2 | 3 | 157 |
| 11 | Joe Root | ENGLAND | 132 | 12 | 1 | 88 | 0 | 7.3 | 2 | 132 |
| 12 | Jasprit Bumrah | INDIA | 0 | 0 | 0 | - | 5 | 7.9 | 3 | 102 |
| 13 | Moeen Ali | ENGLAND | 85 | 9 | 1 | 130.8 | 0 | 6 | 3 | 100 |
| 14 | David Willey | ENGLAND | 15 | 0 | 1 | 166.7 | 3 | 6.7 | 3 | 91 |
| 15 | Jos Buttler | ENGLAND | 52 | 3 | 2 | 86.7 | 0 | - | 3 | 79 |
| 16 | Jake Ball | ENGLAND | 0 | 0 | 0 | - | 5 | 6.8 | 3 | 77 |
| 17 | Jonny Bairstow | ENGLAND | 56 | 5 | 1 | 87.5 | 0 | - | 1 | 64 |
| 18 | Liam Plunkett | ENGLAND | 27 | 5 | 0 | 150 | 3 | 7.8 | 2 | 58 |
| 19 | Ravichandran Ashwin | INDIA | 16 | 0 | 1 | 123.1 | 3 | 7 | 3 | 43 |
| 20 | Sam Billings | ENGLAND | 35 | 5 | 0 | 60.3 | 0 | - | 1 | 32 |
| 21 | Lokesh Rahul | INDIA | 24 | 3 | 1 | 70.6 | 0 | - | 3 | 25 |
| 22 | Alex Hales | ENGLAND | 23 | 4 | 0 | 76.7 | 0 | - | 2 | 21 |
| 23 | Manish Pandey | INDIA | 0 | 0 | 0 | - | 0 | - | 0 | 13 |
| 24 | Bhuvneshwar Kumar | INDIA | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 6.6 | 2 | 8 |
| 25 | Shikhar Dhawan | INDIA | 12 | 2 | 0 | 48 | 0 | - | 2 | 8 |
| 26 | Umesh Yadav | INDIA | 0 | 0 | 0 | - | 1 | 9 | 1 | -3 |
| 27 | Ajinkya Rahane | INDIA | 1 | 0 | 0 | 16.7 | 0 | - | 1 | -3 |
| 28 | Adil Rashid | ENGLAND | 0 | 0 | 0 | - | 0 | 10 | 1 | -20 |
Runs (scored) ' No of 4s ' No of 6s ' Strike rate ' W: Wickets taken ' Eco: Economy rate ' M: Matches played ' MVPI: Most valuable player index = sum of batting, bowling and fielding points '
Run outs are counted as 1 (wicket) for a direct hit, and 0.5 (wicket) if the fielder is an equal participant in a run out dismissal.
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