Top 5 captains and their lucky charm in ODI Cricket

Every captain backs a certain set of players in limited-overs due to the variety of roles they offer to the team. Some captains trust few players who can bat and bowl, few players who can do big-hitting and few players who bowl in certain situations. At times, such players come to the rescue of the team with their skill while a few with their ‘luck factor’. In this article, we look at few captains and their lucky charm players i.e. the captains who have won all matches when a certain player is selected in the XI.

Here are the top five lucky charms in ODI cricket in whose presence their captains have 100 win percentage:

5. Faf du Plessis and Wiaan Mulder – 7 matches

Wiaan Mulder was backed by South Africa ahead of the 2019 World Cup as an all-round option. He played a total of ten ODIs thus far; all of them across 20 months going into the World event. However, he failed to make an impact as he picked up 8 wickets and scored only 74 runs. Nevertheless, Mulder seemed to be Faf du Plessis’ lucky charm as they won an ODI series in Sri Lanka in 2018.

Mulder played a total of seven ODIs under Faf’s captaincy and ended up on the winning side in all the seven games. Until the 2017 tour, the Proteas never won chasing in the ODI format against Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka. But in first two matches of the series, they chased down targets of 194 and 245 respectively.

Faf was ruled out of the remaining two matches where the visitors lost chasing twice in two games. Faf du Plessis recently stepped down from the captaincy of South Africa team. Hence, he might not be able to play quite too many ODIs following the recent debacles let alone leading the team again.