:laugh Guptill. No bias there at all. Got a decent record opening, but that's down to 1 big innings. There's no way he's the 2nd best ODi opener in the world right now. I'd take Sehwag, Dilshan, Gayle, Tendulkar, Watson, Gambhir and Haddin before Guptill. He's a decent player and all, but in an ODi XI opening the batting is going a little far.
A purely stats based (from the last 12 months) XI:
Virender Sehwag - 782 runs at 60.15 with 2 hundreds at a strike rate of 127.77
Tilakaratne Dilshan - 647 runs at 49.76 with 2 hundreds at a strike rate of 98.62
Ricky Ponting - 930 runs at 44.28 with 2 hundreds at a strike rate of 83.10
Yuvraj Singh - 957 runs at 56.29 with 4 hundreds at a strike rate of 111.27
Shivnarine Chanderpaul - 677 runs at 61.54 with 2 hundreds at a strike rate of 77.54
MS Dhoni + - 876 runs at 62.57 with 0 hundreds at a strike rate of 85.46
Shakib Al-Hasan - 508 runs at 36.28 + 26 wickets at 25.34
Stuart Broad - 33 wickets at 27.21 at a strike rate of 27
Nuwan Kulasekara - 38 wickets at 23.76 at a strike rate of 31
Dale Steyn - 31 wickets at 19.87 at a strike rate of 25
Ajantha Mendis - 38 wickets at 21.18 at a strike rate of 28.5
You could possibly dispute Broad's selection, in favour of Umar Gul. But Broad's got more wickets, more 4fers and he bats. Kyle Mills also has a better average than Broad, but Broad's taken the same amount of wickets in less games at a much better strike rate. So I'd say his selection is justified.
I'd probably go with either Gayle or Dilshan.
