Shahid Afridi celebrates after dismissing Australia’s Andrew Symonds in their World Twenty20 match

Calcutta: Shahid Afridi’s allround skills have come in handy for Pakistan in the ICC World Twenty20 meet in South Africa. The 27-year-old Pakistani is leading the Player of the Tournament race with seven points, according to an ICC release.

The trio of Aussie Stuart Clark, South African Morne Morkel and Sri Lankan Sanath Jayasuriya trail Afridi by a point. South Africa and Sri Lanka are out of the meet, so only Clark from this group can displace Afridi at the top.

The others with a chance of catching up with Afridi are his teammates Misbah-ul Haq, Younis Khan and Shoaib Malik; Aussies Brett Lee, Nathan Bracken and Matthew Hayden; New Zealanders Craig McMillan and Daniel Vettori; Indians Rohit Sharma and Yuvraj Singh.

The panel of judges for choosing the Player of the Tournament consists of TV commentators.

They nominate the player of the match for each game, with three votes going to the top performer, two for next best and one for the third choice. Those votes are then added together to produce the Player of the Tournament.

All matches, including the final, count towards those standings and the player with most votes at the end of the tournament receives a superb trophy.

THE TOP PERFORMERS

7 points — Shahid Afridi (Pak)

6 points — Stuart Clark (Aus), Sanath Jayasuriya (SL), Morne Morkel (SA), Brett Lee (Aus)

5 points — Craig McMillan (NZ), Misbah-ul Haq (Pak), Younis Khan (Pak)

4 points — Nathan Bracken (Aus), Dilhara Fernando (SL), Shoaib Malik (Pak)

3 points — Zunaed Siddique (Ban), Rohit Sharma (Ind), Chris Gayle (WI), Mark Gillespie (NZ), Matthew Hayden (Aus), Justin Kemp (SA), Mohammed Ashraful (Ban), Mohammed Asif (Pak), Albie Morkel (SA), Kevin Pietersen (Eng), Brendan Taylor (Zim), Daniel Vettori (NZ), Yuvraj Singh (Ind)