An enigmatic strokemaker by design, Martin Guptill has been one of the mainstays of New Zealand's batting in white-ball cricket over the years. Guptill's early life was struck with tragedy when at the age of 14, he suffered a forklift accident which resulted in him losing three toes on his foot. However, he put that setback aside and he featured in the New Zealand team for the Under-19 World Cup that was held in Sri Lanka.
 

A key feature of Guptill's batting is the rhythm of his strokeplay. When in flow, he is a very difficult batsman to stop because of his impeccable ability to deal the pacers as well as spinners. There could be days when he can get out in frustrating ways but that's the nature of the beast that Guptill is. Won't be wrong to say that all this is worth the kind of matchwinner he has been for the Kiwis.
 

Although he's been a mainstay in the shorter formats with streaks of genius here and there, that's not been emulated in the Test arena where he was being persisted with, for a period of time. The 2016 tour of India was the tipping point after which the selectors decided to omit Guptill from the Test squad. It wasn't as if he was failing but his continuing issues of not converting starts into significant knocks meant that he had to make way. With the success of Raval and Latham at the top, it's tough to see Guptill making a comeback in red-ball cricket.
 

World Cup - Through the years
 

In World Cup 2011, Guptill was the second highest run-getter for New Zealand and in the 2015 edition, he again performed fairly well including an unbeaten 237 in the quarterfinal which made him the first Kiwi batsman to notch up an ODI double ton. There have been several impact knocks by Guptill over the years, most of which have single-handedly destroyed the opponents. Martin even held the highest individual score by a Kiwi then (189) before breaking it himself in the 2015 World Cup.
 

Martin Guptill's average in ODIs is 43.51 while his average in World Cup matches is 57-odd. The only drawback is that the opener has scored these runs against sides that have a rather weak bowling line-up. He has struggled against sides like Australia, South Africa and England. In World Cup 2019, he'll be facing all the teams at least once, hence Guptill needs to make sure he gets runs not only against the weaker oppositions but also against the heavyweights.