England captain Eoin Morgan leads the England PCA Most Valuable Player Rankings for the winter after a stellar series against Sri Lanka, which saw him only dismissed once in scoring 195 runs in a rain-effected triumph.
The batsman played a key role in the three victories, which saw him score 92 followed by unbeaten scores of 58 and 31 as England finished the series with a 3-1 win.
Incredibly, Morgan has now led England to nine successive ODI series wins to take his side to the top of the ICC ODI Rankings and finish 2018 with 17 wins and five defeats in 50-over cricket.
The 32-year-old pipped Adil Rashid to be the MVP of the Sri Lanka series with the leg-spinner contributing six wickets while bowling economically to restrict the hosts throughout the four innings he bowled in.
After rain restricted the opening ODI to just 15 overs, Morgan hit 92 off 91 balls out of a total of 278-9 in the second game which was followed by some astute captaincy which saw the tourists win by 31 runs via DLS method. Chris Woakes was the MVP after taking three wickets for just 26 runs with the new ball to secure 28 MVP points.
Rashid then scooped the MVP for the third fixture with four wickets in another rain-effected game, which was reduced to 21 overs-a-side. The Yorkshireman bowled his full allocation of five overs for 36 runs with England knocking off the 151-run target midway through the 19th over with Morgan top scoring with an unbeaten 58.
With Rashid scoring 36 points, Tom Curran celebrated his England comeback with three wickets with his form meaning he ended the series in fourth position of the ODI MVP table.
Curran, Rashid and Woakes shared the wickets in the penultimate game with Moeen Ali who, chipped in with two key wickets of Niroshan Dickwella and captain Dinesh Chandimal. Top order wickets score highly against wickets taken against lower order batsman in the MVP formula, which was designed by the players to identify the match-winners and key influencers of matches throughout the domestic and international season.
The innovation, which provides a more rigorous analysis of player performances than traditional batting and bowling averages, the MVP algorithm, gives full credit to those players whose performances improve their team’s chances of winning.
Jason Roy top scored with 45 at the top of the order while Joe Root and Morgan hit unbeaten thirties before the rain came down to secure the series with a 31-run victory via DLS.
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With England 3-0 going into the final game in Colombo, captain Morgan rung the changes, resting himself, Woakes and speedster Olly Stone in favour of Sam Curran, Liam Plunkett and Mark Wood.
An uncharacteristically poor display saw a heavy 219-run defeat via DLS, however, that should not dampen the spirits of a team who secured their ninth straight ODI series trophy.
A one-off IT20 takes place on Saturday to end a hugely successful year in white-ball cricket going into their biggest challenge in 2019 which sees England host the ICC World Cup.
View the MVP Rankings here.
