Dwayne Smith, who took three wickets and scored a quickfire 32, is Rediff's Most Valuable Player (MVP) after day 1. He currently heads the WC 2007 tally with 136 points.
The other Dwayne from West Indies, Bravo, is third on the MVP list following a good all-round performance. Pakistan's Rao Iftikhar Anjum is second, with three wickets and a direct run-out. Shoaib Malik and Marlon Samuels are fourth and fifth following good batting performances.
| Rank | Country | Player | Runs | Balls | Ct | St | Rc | Bb | W | M | Total |
| 1 | WI | Dwayne Smith | 32 | 15 | 0 | 36 | 60 | 3 | 1 | 136 |
| 2 | Pak | Rao Iftikhar Anjum | 11 | 18 | 0 | 44 | 60 | 3 | 1 | 107.6 |
| 3 | WI | Dwayne Bravo | 16 | 17 | 2 | 42 | 54 | 3 | 1 | 101.6 |
| 4 | Pak | Shoaib Malik | 62 | 54 | 1 | 24 | 24 | 0 | 1 | 81 |
| 5 | WI | Marlon Samuels | 63 | 70 | 0 | 1 | 70 | |||
| 6 | WI | Daren Powell | 1 | 1 | 0 | 42 | 60 | 2 | 1 | 55.2 |
| 7 | Pak | Umar Gul | 0 | 1 | 0 | 38 | 54 | 2 | 1 | 52.4 |
| 8 | Pak | Mohammad Hafeez | 11 | 28 | 0 | 39 | 54 | 2 | 1 | 51.8 |
| 9 | WI | Corey Collymore | 8 | 2 | 0 | 27 | 50 | 1 | 1 | 51.4 |
| 10 | WI | Ramnaresh Sarwan | 49 | 65 | 0 | 1 | 46 | |||
| 11 | WI | Brian Lara | 37 | 56 | 2 | 1 | 39.2 | |||
| 12 | WI | Jerome Taylor | 2 | 4 | 0 | 38 | 60 | 1 | 1 | 34.8 |
| 13 | Pak | Inzamam ul-Haq | 36 | 65 | 1 | 1 | 25 | |||
| 14 | Pak | Kamran Akmal | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 24.2 | |||
| 15 | Pak | Danish Kaneria | 0 | 0 | 0 | 45 | 54 | 1 | 1 | 22.2 |
| 16 | Pak | Mohammad Yousuf | 37 | 72 | 0 | 1 | 16.4 | |||
| 17 | WI | Denesh Ramdin | 1 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 13.8 | |||
| 18 | Pak | Younis Khan | 9 | 13 | 1 | 1 | 12.6 | |||
| 19 | Pak | Imran Nazir | 6 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 9.6 | |||
| 20 | WI | Chris Gayle | 2 | 6 | 0 | 1 | -0.8 | |||
| 21 | Pak | Rana Naved-ul-Hasan | 11 | 29 | 1 | 49 | 54 | 0 | 1 | -2 |
| 22 | WI | Shivnarine Chanderpaul | 19 | 63 | 1 | 1 | -7.4 |
Notice that Naved-ul-Hasan and Chanderpaul are currently holding "negative" value: Chanderpaul because he scored very few runs very slowly, and Naved-ul-Hasan because he gave away a lot of runs and failed to take any wicket.
We will upload this list every day during the Group Stage of WC 2007, and declare our first set of most valuable players after the Group Stage.
We will run a separate list of most valuable players for the Super8 stage. This list will "carry forward" points gained by players against opponents who make it to the Super8 stage. So if Sehwag scores a century against Bermuda, but Bermuda don't advance to the Super8 stage, his points earned against Bermuda will not be carried forward.
Finally, if you feel like it, take a look at the Chernoff faces of Day 1's top nine MVP's.
These faces look vague and preposterous to start with, but stare harder and some things become apparent. For example:
The higher the ranking, the longer is the hair length.
The batsmen (Malik, Samuels) have round faces, eyes wide apart, smaller ears and a wider nose. The more runs they score, the more they seem to smile.
The bowlers (the two Dwaynes and Rao) have eyes close to each other, a long nose, tapered faces and big ears; the bigger the ears, the more wickets they have taken. They also appear rather stern or gloomy. But which bowler wouldn't when he's usually required to sweat without reward in ODI matches!
I thank my colleagues, Debasish Ghosh and K Anil Kumar of Cranes Software, for preparing the MVP list and Chernoff faces. We will update this list every day.
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