And my choice of the most valuable player this year is...

three matches to go as i write this. so who is the most valuable player of the tournament. the castrol index will throw up its choice and it would be interesting to compare that against perception. so all you lovers of numbers and cricket, put down your choices and then look at the castrol index to see how your choice stacks up against numbers. in an ideal world the two should be identical except of course that you could include the captaincy factor which is virtually impossible to quantify.

the popular choice at this stage should, i guess, be a toss up between mathew hayden and suresh raina. the big aussie has been awesome and has scored many runs very quickly. but he has done something else. he has made all other teams spend a lot of time thinking of how to bowl to him and in doing so has constantly played on their minds. 'what if hayden gets away?' would be the fear in the opposition camp and if he has a couple of good overs teams very quickly start thinking of plan b. so for his aura, hayden gets a few more in the qualitative analysis.

raina, stockily but much smaller built, seems to hit the ball as long; certainly he hits it long enough (it doesn't really matter whether a six is 80 meters long or 100! and in any case i am not sure how those distances are measured!!) and unlike hayden has emerged as a valuable bowler for dhoni and the chennai super kings. in test cricket it is unlikely he would bowl,in 50 overs he might turn his arm over occasionally but in t20 it very often comes down to a ball-to-ball contest. and raina has succeeded because he seems to be very cool and balanced at the time of delivery. he is a shrewd young fellow, occasionally just stops fleetingly in his arm swing to get an idea of the batsman's footwork, and then pings the ball where he wants it to. he has bowled valuably in the death and catches well.

many others would make the cut; ab de villiers, rohit sharma, dirk nannes, anil kumble. that is like a wimbledon seeding list. let's see who wins. currently i am tied between raina and hayden. if it were an sms poll in a reality show, both would lose because the chennai vote would get split!!!