IPL Update

Our list of 24 players represents the cream of the crop of world cricket so, as you can imagine, many have found their way to the IPL. Let's see who has washed up where and for how much.

Chennai Super Kings 

Ravi Jadeja (Retained)

Kings XI Punjab 

Ravi Ashwin (7.6 crore)

Aaron Finch (6.2 crore)

Mumbai Indians

JP Duminy (1 crore)

Rajasthan Royals 

Jofra Archer (7.2 crore)

Jos Buttler (4.4 crore)

Steve Smith (Retained)

Royal Challengers Bangalore 

Quinton de Kock (2.8 crore)

AB De Villiers (Retained) 

Virat Kohli (Retained)

Sunrisers Hyderabad 

Shakib Al Hasan (2 crore)

Rashid Khan (9 crore, Right to Match Card)

David Warner (Retained) 

Kane Williamson (Retained) 

Unsold

Hashim Amla

Nathan Lyon

Shaun Marsh

Joe Root

Not in auction 

George Bailey

Dean Elgar 

Simon Harmer

Mitchell Marsh

Jeetan Patel

Shakib Al Hasan - The Best Cricketer of the Week...again

His timing has been nothing short of incredible. Two weeks ago Shakib Al Hasan sat at the bottom of the table with 0 points. Two weeks later he sits atop the weekly total for the second week running and is only behind JP Duminy overall. The common bond that both these players share is the sheer amount of games they have played in over a comparatively short period of time. Shakib and Duminy have squeezed in five games over the last fortnight which sees them both riding high on the table. With the likes of Joe Root and Aaron Finch about to complete their fifth ODI of the year just behind them, they do seem to have s comfortable lead. 

Jofra Archer and Rashid Khan, the wunderkinds of bowling, appear to be unable to operate in tandem. When one of them is in the ascendancy the other underperforms. Last week Archer squeezed into the top ten performers of the week whilst Khan crapped out with a round zero. This week the pair have switched places with Rashid sixth in the table with his five wickets in a week for the Adelaide Strikers, whilst Jofra Archer's paltry 31 points comes from one wicket and a handful of runs in his two games for the now eliminated Hobart Hurricanes. Their relative inconsistency puts them side by side in the overall table just outside the top ten, with Archer claiming a five point lead on his Afghanistani rival. 

His performances have not been spoken about with lofty tones in the ODI series between Australia and England, but Mitchell Marsh has been performing solidly for the home side. His above average performances with both bat and ball place him in good stead in the table but he is also going the extra mile with his batting and bowling bonus points with 90 of his 212 points this week coming from strike rate, economy and batting bonus points. He will also have cause to feel hard done by due to the manner of his dismissals in both games this week - sent back for 55 and 32 on the receiving end of some outstandingly high quality return catches. 

It seems to be a growing trend of these posts but we are, again, seeing some players we would have expected big things from hugely underperforming. Steve Smith and David Warner have been on this list all January and are only getting themselves deeper into bother. Warner's yield of 21 points from two games - all from runs - is particularly eye opening. AB De Villiers is a player we can join to their ranks this week. He underperformed in the last Test against India and walked away with just 31 runs - 20 of which came from opportunities in the field. Root was also underwhelming this week - only turning up in one of the ODI and getting out for 27. He finds himself outside of the top five of the week for the first time.

Two players who are on a fairly steep upward curve this week, albeit from a pretty dire base level, are George Bailey and Hashim Amla. Both players scored more in the last week than their total runs up to this point in the year. Bailey finally turned it on for Hobart (too late some would add) with two scores in the thirties and with a very healthy strike rate to boot - especially against the Melbourne Stars where he got a 20 ball 32. Amla also did well with cumulative runs of 113 in his two innings in the final Test against India.  This puts these players into the top ten for the week and drags Amla into a bunch of South African players in the middle of the overall table. 

Shakib Al Hassan - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Battling against adversity is one of the signs of a good sportsperson. This is especially needed if you are a cricketer representing a nation outside the top four Test playing nations. Your games are fewer and further between than if you represent one of the big four nations, meaning that when patches of games do come along you have to hit form straight away. Shakib Al Hassan has done just that. At the start of the week he was one of just three players from our list to have not played in 2018. By the end of the week he finds himself seventh in the overall points. From his two games in the Tri-series against Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka, the Bangladeshi All-rounder bagged 6 wickets and a total of 104 runs. It seems fitting that he ended this stellar week receiving the news that he will enter the IPL auction as one of the marquee signings with a base price of RS 2 Crore. Shakib's form is on the up. 

Which brings us to two bowlers whose form has reversed this week. Rashid Khan has been decelerating week by week since the start of January, culminating in him receiving 0 points this week from his one game representing the Adelaide Strikers. This fruitless week sees him drop from seventh to fourteenth position overall. In a reverse situation Ravi Ashwin has bounced back from an uninspiring First Test against South Africa to get five wickets in India's second Test loss. This takes him from thirteenth to sixth position overall and makes him India's top ranking player so far in 2018. From the last week these two players appear to be heading in different directions but, if rumours are to be believed, they both could be heading to Chennai after the IPL auctions. 

Finch is another player with a dramatic turn off fortunes from week 2 to week 3. With a yield of just 2 points in the second week, he has joined up with Australia and scored back to back centuries to see him placed second in the rankings for the week and move up to third overall. He has gone from zero to hero and become the fastest player to ten ODI hundreds from Australia doing so in his 84th innings. 

With some Aussies in the ascendency, the 2018 form of two of their 2017 powerhouses has been more underwhelming. Steve Smith and David Warner have not taken to January as well as they ended 2017. Smith scored exactly 50 runs in the last 20 days of December but just 169 in the first 20 of January. Warner has a similar split of 211 to 101 and it is perhaps his form that is the most surprising as many would have expected  him to have thrived in the white ball format. They find themselves in 15th and 19th respectively and outside the top three Australians. 

Another surprise is the continual success of JP Duminy. He finds himself still flying high in the overall list and is the only player to have featured in the top six best performing players every week in January. This week he got his highest yield of points yet with scores of 71 runs and 2 wickets from his 2 games this week - his strike rate of 189.18 and a 36 run over for the Cape Cobras against the Knights being the most eye catching. 

Week

Shakib Al Hasan - 379

Aaron Finch - 303

Ravi Ashwin- 301

Joe Root - 257

JP Duminy- 241

Virat Kohli - 218

Nathan Lyon - 170

AB de Villiers - 150

Jofra Archer- 134

Kane Williamson - 134

Mitchell Marsh - 116

Hashim Amla- 113

Dean Elgar- 111

Jos Buttler - 96

Simon Harmer - 88

Steve Smith- 71

Quinton de Kock - 62

David Warner - 57

George Bailey - 56

Jeetan Patel - 50

Rashid Khan - 0

Ravi Jadeja - dnp 

Shaun Marsh - dnp 

Sunil Narine - dnp 

Overall

JP Duminy - 580

Joe Root - 483

Aaron Finch - 479

Kane Williamson - 470

Nathan Lyon - 445

Ravi Ashwin - 435

Shakib Al Hasan - 379

Jos Buttler - 356

Simon Harmer - 351

Jofra Archer - 344

AB De Villiers- 290

Mitchell Marsh - 287

Virat Kohli- 261

Rashid Khan - 225

Steve Smith - 204

Shaun Marsh- 196

Quinton de Kock - 193

Dean Elgar- 156

David Warner - 133

Hashim Amla - 120

George Bailey - 112 

Jeetan Patel - 108

Ravi Jadeja - ytp 

Sunil Narine- ytp 

Nathan Lyon - The Best Cricketer of the Week

The cosmic lords of cricket are not being kind to England at the moment. Jos Buttler, the most impressive player from last week, has joined up with the England team and his points have plummeted accordingly. He has been usurped by Nathan Lyon who began this Ashes tournament by being an unlikely aggressor and ended it with five wickets in the final Test. England fans were left wishing it wasn't him that was on the receiving end of a Bairstow hello. This, added to a wicket in his return to the BBL for the Adelaide Strikers, puts him top of the tree for Week 2 and third highest on the overall rankings. The only saving grace is that the spinner is still persona non grata for white ball cricket. 

By all accounts it has been a topsy turvy week for those players who were flying high from their BBL involvement last week. Buttler is joined by Rashid Khan and Jofra Archer - both of whom got scores in the hundreds last week but this week have been more underwhelming. The only thing that Archer can, literally, cling on to his superb return catch from Hobart Hurricanes victory over Brisbane Heat. 

The most concerning player of  the BBL bunch is George Bailey. With 16 runs from the last three matches, the Australian batsman is looking dramatically out of touch. The only saving grace for the Hobart player is his sharp performances in the field, where he is picking up more points than he has with his batting. His bad week has been further highlighted by the fact he was heavily implicated in the poor umpiring decision that marred the game against Brisbane. The only way is up for the Tasmanian.  

On the other end of the scale from the razamataz of the BBL, two of the biggest performers so far this month are exiled South Africans playing in the rather more parochial Momentum One Day Cup. Despite the success of their international kinsmen, JP Duminy and Simon Harmer are doing rather well in this tournament and have the luxury of playing twice in a week. Duminy has been especially eye catching this week with scores of 81 and 22 for the Cape Cobras. His yield of 188 points this week surprisingly puts him as the most successful cricketer from our list after two weeks of January. The make or break moment for Duminy is his return to the international fold for the ODI against India. Can he continue this form or will he fade away? 

By the time the year is up Kohli and Smith's years will feature heavily in the highlights reel but in the first fortnight they have been underwhelming. Smith and, to a lesser extent, David Warner have had their scores capped by a less than inspiring England performance that saw Australia limited to just one innings. There is no such excuse for Virat Kohli who joins Hashim Amla and Dean Elgar in a list of batsmen who are underperforming in this Test. The former two players shared 8 runs between them in the First Test with Elgar's fine form ending with a score of 25. With the Second Test underway some of these batsmen are putting themselves back on the right track but it is a rare instance indeed to see them so low in the overall rankings.  

Week 2 Totals

Nathan Lyon - 275

Joe Root- 226

Shaun Marsh- 196

JP Duminy - 188

Mitchell Marsh - 171

Kane Williamson - 152

Simon Harmer 151

AB De Villiers- 140

Ravi Ashwin - 134

Steve Smith - 133

Quinton de Kock- 131

Rashid Khan - 85

David Warner - 76

Jos Buttler - 68

Jofra Archer - 50

Dean Elgar - 45

Virat Kohli- 43

George Bailey - 35

Jeetan Patel - 26

Hashim Amla - 7

Aaron Finch- 2

Total

JP Duminy - 339

Kane Williamson- 336

Nathan Lyon - 275

Simon Harmer -263 

Jos Buttler - 260

Joe Root - 226

Rashid Khan - 225 

Jofra Archer- 210

Shaun Marsh - 196

Aaron Finch - 176 

Mitchell Marsh- 171

Ab De Villiers - 140

Ravi Ashwin - 134

Steve Smith - 133

Quinton de Kock - 131 

David Warner - 76

Jeetan Patel - 58

George Bailey - 56

Dean Elgar - 45

Virat Kohli - 43

Hashim Amla - 7 

Yet to play

Sunil Narine, Shakib Al-Hassan, Ravindra Jadeja 

Jos Buttler - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Naturally if you had told me that the most successful cricketer from our group was an Englishman in Australia I would have been overjoyed. Our boys had come good at last!?

The fact that Jos Buttler has been top of the tree whilst plying his trade for Sydney Thunder in the BBL has been somewhat galling. With a combined total of 102 runs with two catches from behind, he has been instrumental in both games for the franchise. 

Is it a coincidence, one wonders, that the English wicket-keeper-batsman is back to his six hitting best just when the IPL auctions are on the horizon? Or is that just cynicism from me? 

Participants from the BBL make up four of the top five most prolific Cricketers in the first week of 2018 due to the sheer amount of games played. The only player to rival them has been Kane Williamson whose 115 against Pakistan nearly fired him to the top position. The top three is completed by Afghanistan spinner Rashid Khan. 

No doubt when the Test players complete their games though - all is to play for. 

 

Jos Buttler - 191

Kane Williamson - 184 

Rashid Khan - 180

Aaron Finch - 174

Jofra Archer - 160

J.P. Duminy- 151

Simon Harmer - 112

Jeetan Patel - 32George Bailey - 11

Yet to complete a game 

Hashim Amla 

Ravi Ashwin

Quinton de Kock 

AB De Villiers

Dean Elgar

Virat Kohli 

Nathan Lyon

Mitchell Marsh 

Shaun Marsh 

Sunil Narine 

Joe Root 

Steve Smith 

David Warner 

Cricket's Hot 22 - From Amla to Williamson

2018 will be a big year for cricket....but who are the top men we should keep an eye out for?

Sneak a glimpse at the 22 Cricketers I expect to be the biggest movers and shakers in world cricket this year. 

Hashim Amla - Been one of the best for many a year but could be a make or break year for the 34 year old.

Jofra Archer - A rising talent starting to make his way on the franchise scene. What could 2018 hold in store for him. 

Ravi Ashwin - 2017 was a head of great change and adaption for Ashwin. Can he get back to top form?

George Bailey - One of Australia's nearly men who has been relegated to knocking around the domestic scene. Can he get his foot in the door this year?

Jos Buttler - Anither man that has fallen off the radar internationally...for now. 

Quinton de Kock - A stalwart of the South Africa team who could push on in 2018. 

AB de Villiers - Injuries have beset ABDV for the last 18 months. Will his fitness hold out? 

JP Duminy - One of the best captains in the world game but potentially the least explosive. 

Dean Elgar - 2017 was an all time top year for Elgar but can he keep it up?

Aaron Finch - Anither fading Aussie star looking for his last shot in 2018. 

Simon Harmer - Could be a big year for Harmer now he's back on the scene for Zimbabwe after some successful performances on the English domestic leagues. 

Rashid Khan - A stellar year in 2017 sees Khan as one of the hottest properties in franchise cricket but with Afghanistan going from strength to strength, what will 2018 hold?

Virat Kohli - Can 2018 be anywhere near as good as 2017 for the all time great? 

Nathan Lyon - Inconsistency was the order of the day for the GOAT in 2017 - might ben be able to keep a steady ship this year? 

 

Shaun Marsh - An impressive Ashes puts Shaun back on the radar after a period away from the Test side. Can he hold on to his place? 

Mitchel Marsh - The enter of the Marsh brothers will also want to solidify his place in what has become a fairly fluid Australia team. 

Sunil Narine - Something of a nonentity on the international scene now but a reinvention as an opening batsman has breathed new life into his T20 form. An enticing prospect for franchises. 

Jeetan Patel - A potentially   surprising name on this list but is becoming a faily handy allrounder both internationally and domestically. Certainly one to watch. 

Joe Root - A difficult end to 2017 might make Root's life tricky at the start of 2018. Only one way to find out. 

Steve Smith - Like Root in reverse - a barn storming end to 2017 sees many people talking of Smith in the loftiest possible tones. Will 2018 be just as successful? 

David Warner - Reaching the end of the autumn of his career but as hard hitting as ever. Will he make hay while the sun shines or will he start to wilt?

Kane Williamson  - Williamson had a comparatively quiet 2017; can he push on and be the world beater of which he is capable?

Marvel as we spend the year with these 22 giants and encapsulate the highs and lows of world cricket at the same time.