Simon Harmer - The Best Cricketer of the Week

I am always pleasantly surprised at how fair the points system is. The fact we have only had one player on the top of our weekly league twice (Shakib Al Hasan) is testament to how it highlights the truly outstanding performers of the week. We have also seen it throw up some rather unusual players for credit. This week is one of those weeks. Simon Harmer delivered almost the perfect game for the Warriors against the Dolphins in the Sunfoil Series this week. He grabbed points in every category with the exception of bonus points for runs and for strike rate. His 12 wickets in one game has seen him beat Sunil Narine's highest points score for one week and has also seen him go from a relatively creditable 9th position to third place overall - over such high flyers as Rashid Khan and the aforementioned Sunil Narine. 

When it comes to T20 season few players utilise their time better than Narine. The PSL is the first big tournament of 2018 and the spinner has swung into T20 form without pause. Building up on his form for Trinidad and Tobago, he has now joined up with Lahore Qalanders and registered a top ten score in his first two games despite the fact that his team have lost their two opening games. Thus far in the year, Narine has picked up the bulk of his points with the ball but now he is in T20 mode his batting has adjusted accordingly - most notably in his ten ball 28 that earned him 68 points alone. If he matches his bowling form for T&T with that explosive batting he could push himself into the top three overall after passing the 1000 point score this week. 

Even with his good start to the year, Kane Williamson is in a world of bother with the bat. He started the year with two weeks in second position lagging behind, first, Jos Buttler and, then, JP Duminy. Since then his poor form has seen him drop week by week. He has now registered single figure scores in 7 of his last 8 games and has an average for February of 17.7. This has seen him struggle to regain his position in the top ten of our overall league. Currently sitting 12th, he is 60 points off Aaron Finch in tenth. With a series of ODI matches against England on the table he will be hoping to turn his form round or face a further embarrassing slip down the league. 

Before this week Nathan Lyon and Steve Smith did not have a lot to crow about. Lyon had suffered a bit of a pasting playing for the Prime Minister's XI against England whilst Smith was second bottom in the table ahead of only Jeetan Patel. This week they have played a warm up game against South Africa A and - without setting the world alight - they have performed comfortably. Lyon's economy was flawless and, whilst he only got one wicket, he seemed to limit the team well - with the exception of one dubious over. Smith's scores were also not overly gargantuan, scoring 23 and 25, however his strike rate in the second innings was 192.3 and his mystery spin brought the house down around South Africa A in their second innings. Lyon's 173 points sees his slide out of the top ten arrested and he now sits in eight place whilst his skipper leap frogs a number of players to move him well away from the foot of the table and alongside his compatriot David Warner. 

He is tenacious - we will give him that. Facing mounting criticism regarding his captaincy, dropped from the one Day team and usurped at the top of the overall table, JP Duminy had his second best week of 2018 and sits second behind Harmer in this week's top point scorers. His back to back half centuries sees him up one place on our overall league - 41 points behind Kohli. Duminy is now expected to return to domestic cricket where he thrived whereas Kohli seems to have nothing on this week. Dare he dream?

Week

Simon Harmer - 504
JP Duminy - 232
Steve Smith- 188
Jos Buttler - 161
Rashid Khan - 178
Nathan Lyon - 173
Mitchell Marsh - 167
Jofra Archer - 145
Sunil Narine - 134
Joe Root - 111
Ravi Jadeja - 96
Shaun Marsh - 74 
Quinton de Kock- 63
David Warner - 55
Virat Kohli - 47
Kane Williamson - 45
Dean Elgar- 27
Aaron Finch - 18
George Bailey - 10
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
Hashim Amla - dnp
Ravi Ashwin - dnp
AB De Villiers- dnp 
Jeetan Patel - dnp 

Overall

Virat Kohli- 1231
JP Duminy - 1190
Simon Harmer - 1169
Rashid Khan - 1166
Sunil Narine- 1036
Mitchell Marsh - 939
Jos Buttler - 851
Nathan Lyon - 834
Ravi Ashwin - 810
Aaron Finch - 735
Joe Root - 733
Kane Williamson - 675
Shakib Al Hasan - 608
Jofra Archer - 550
Hashim Amla - 467
Steve Smith - 463
David Warner - 435
AB De Villiers- 423
Quinton de Kock - 408
Shaun Marsh- 408
Ravi Jadeja - 397
George Bailey - 395
Dean Elgar- 394
Jeetan Patel - 108

Rashid Khan - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Sometimes luck makes up a large part of a professional cricketers' career. Some of the finest Cricketers of a nation's age have the indignity of being born in an era when their national team is in the duldrums. On the other hand there are players that, by fluke of birth, manage to ride the crest of a wave of success - Rashid Khan is one of them. He is the poster boy for Afghanistan's brave new dawn and I can think of no more potent sign of just how brave this dawn is than by the solid thrashing they are giving Zimbabwe. With the exception of a solitary ODI win, Zimbabwe have been beaten comfortably by the new kids on the block in their other five matches. Rashid is one of the new kids that have inflicted most damage. He has got 18 wickets in the series which has seen him go from thirteenth position overall to second in just two weeks. His 9 wickets this week sees him top the table. 

I predicted that JP Duminy's time at the peak of the overall table was due to end in the coming weeks however he has dropped from first overall to third in the last week - overtaken by Virat Kohli and Rashid Khan. More worryingly for the South African is the fact that he was dropped for the final ODI against India after a run of torrid scores for his national team. He now has the T20 series - for whom he is the captain - to set the score straight. His hot vein of form has seemingly passed to Kohli whose scores continue to impress in February. He finished the series against South Africa with 558 runs and became the first ever batsman to score over 500 runs in a bilateral series. He is also the first player to break the 1000 point score in our overall league. 

And another climber in the overall league is long beleaguered Australian captain David Warner. The batsman has been on a long vein of particularly poor form but his 59 from 43 balls gave him points for his run-scoring ability as well as a healthy share of points for a strike rate of 245.83. In the same match Aaron Finch's strike rate of 257.14 also allowed him to nearly double his points for the week allowing him to move into the top ten overall point scorers. Another quirk of Warner's burst of points is it now moves him well away from the bottom of the table - however his replacement near the bottom of the point scoring table is his Australian compatriot Steve Smith. That would be one of the best batsmen in the world only separated from the bottom place by Jeetan Patel. 

I praised the form of Ravi Jadeja last week - not so much for his wicket-taking prowess but for his low economy and quality batting in the Vijay Hazare Trophy. This week he joins Rashid Khan from the second week of the completion in the unenviable position of having played a game and got 0 points. Saurashtra dominated Services with the bat so the lower order batsmen was not called on to bat but the fact that he was not called on to bowl speaks volumes about the lack of faith that his coach, Shitanshu Kotak, has in the bowler. 

Week

Rashid Khan - 328
Virat Kohli - 245
Sunil Narine - 195
David Warner - 109
Hashim Amla - 101
Dean Elgar - 81
Aaron Finch - 76
Ravi Ashwin - 65
JP Duminy - 11
Jos Buttler - 2
Ravi Jadeja- 0 
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
Jofra Archer - dnp
George Bailey - dnp
Quinton de Kock - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Nathan Lyon - dnp
Mitchell Marsh - dnp
Shaun Marsh - dnp
Jeetan Patel - dnp
Joe Root - dnp
Steve Smith - dnp

Overall

Virat Kohli- 1184
Rashid Khan - 988
JP Duminy - 958
Sunil Narine- 902
Ravi Ashwin - 810
Mitchell Marsh - 772
Aaron Finch - 717
Jos Buttler - 690
Simon Harmer - 665
Nathan Lyon - 661
Kane Williamson - 630
Joe Root - 622
Shakib Al Hasan - 608
Hashim Amla - 467
AB De Villiers- 423
Jofra Archer - 405
George Bailey - 385
David Warner - 380
Dean Elgar- 367
Quinton de Kock - 345
Shaun Marsh- 334
Ravi Jadeja - 301
Steve Smith - 275
Jeetan Patel - 108

Virat Kohli - The Best Cricketer of the Week

On a week dominated by fine bowling performances, the man who ends up as the best cricketer is a batsman - namely Virat Kohli. Whilst he has never been out of form, January was not the most electric month for the super star of world cricket - he set this right in a week which sees his February average rise to 98.25 compared to his 47.7 in January. His 281 runs this week also puts him in the top five run scorers of all time for India and puts him a mere 8 points behind our overall leader, JP Duminy. With Duminy on a run of poor scores and Kohli looking unbeatable, we could see a new overall leader next week. 

Ravi Ashwin has not been representing India in the white ball contests against South Africa but makes up a trio of three bowlers who have been excelling in their domestic competitions. 10 wickets plus a top score of 41 runs sees the Indian spinner, who had not played since the 13th January, accrue 310 points in a week and bring him back into the top ten players overall. For the other high performing bowlers, Sunil Narine and Simon Harmer, it has not been all about wickets. The West Indian spinner picked up six wickets this week but has also claimed 70 extra points through some more hugely economical bowling with all of his figures falling under 3. Simon Harmer's performances for the Warriors have been equally as frugal with his highest economy being 2.47. 

Perhaps the oddest high-scoring bowler this week has been Ravi Jadeja. Playing his first games of 2018, the Saurashta man has not taken a single wicket in four games - but picked up a hat load of points for frugal bowling as well as bagging a very unlikely 113* against Jharkand. Whilst he has managed to get 301 points this week, it will be a worry to him that he has gone 61.4 overs since his last wicket in List A cricket. It is Jadeja that I have selected this week for my unflattering comparison with David Warner. Luckless Warner got just 6 runs with the bat as part of his score of 56 this week. Jadeja is now three places above him despite playing five fewer games than the Australian and starting the week on 0. Warner is still the second lowest ranked player. 

Rashid Khan wraps up, what has been, a good week for spinners. Throughout the BBL he had been battling for superiority with Jofra Archer - however his 270 points picked up whilst playing for Afghanistan has seen him leave his English (?) compatriot in the dust. His nine wickets this week see him placed just inside the overall top ten. With Archer now six places below him, the Nangarhar born superstar is now vying for superiority with the likes of more experienced players like Nathan Lyon or Simon Harmer. 

When we focus on outstanding batting and bowling, we need to reserve space for those who have not done so well. This has not been a good week for Quinton de Kock, whose performances have seen him dropped from the South Africa ODI side. More galling for him is the fact that his replacement, Henrich Klassen, was deemed man of the match yesterday. This could see a spell out of the spotlight for De Kock who may see himself in the bottom third of our overall table for a little while. 

Sunil Narine - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Could a player this year make more of an impact in one week than the dominance Sunil Narine has shown in the West Indies' Regional Super50 competition? The unlikeable mystery spinner has not played a game since the start of December when he turned out for the Dhaka Dynamites in the Bangladesh Premier League but he did not show any sign of rustiness as he scorched a 46 ball 51 for Trinidad and Tobago in the opening game against Barbados. He has since added to that with 10 wickets in three games over five days - his best being a stunning 5-10 over the Combined Campuses and Colleges team. His economy in all three games has been under three and his form must be leaving the West Indies team bitter at the fact that the precocious spinner still refuses to turn out for his national side, outside of major competitions. His 487 points in a week is the highest by an individual player so far in 2018 and catapults him up the overall table, putting him one position above Nathan Lyon - the first cricketer of the week from Week 1. If his dominance in this competition continues who knows how many points he can rack up. 

I thought that this might be the year for Kane Williamson to put himself back amongst the top batsmen in the world. A few years ago the four key batsmen of Kohli, Smith, Root and Williamson were setting the cricketing world alight. The first two have accelerated into the stratosphere, the third one has remained treading water whilst the last one....appears to be stagnating. He scored 17 runs across his two T20 games for New Zealand this week taking his run of single figure scores to three in a row. His average for 2018 stands at 31.4 but if you remove his two big scores against Pakistan it is a more worrying 15.75. Williamson needs to use the triangular tournament against England and Australia to turn his year around. 

I am still surprised to see JP Duminy at the top of the overall rankings - especially when his transition from domestic cricket back to international cricket ended with a thunderingly disappointing yield of just 12 runs. Despite this lack of form, that began in his final few games in the Momentum One Day Cup, there is only Joe Root who may overtake him in the near future. Shakib is injured, Mitchell Marsh is not selected for the T20 series and Jos Buttler is just too far off the pace. Regardless of his performances this week I still expect to see the unlikely figure of JP Duminy atop the overall list next week. 

With Duminy unexpected at the top, who here expected to see David Warner at the bottom? Only Jeetan Patel sits between Warner and the very bottom of the table - and the veteran New Zealander has played 4 less games than Warner. Warner finds himself in the rather ignominious position that George Bailey found himself in for a number of weeks over January; namely scoring more points with his work in the field compared to his batting. Even more gallingly, Bailey now sits seven places above the stand in Australian captain with 129 points separating them. 

Week 

Sunil Narine 487
Virat Kohli 162
Mitchell Marsh 106
George Bailey 103
Joe Root 92
Jos Buttler 61
David Warner 61
Shaun Marsh 60 
Quinton de Kock 44
Jofra Archer 30
Kane Williamson 27 
Dean Elgar 20
Rashid Khan 20
Hashim Amla 16
JP Duminy 12
Steve Smith 12 
Nathan Lyon 1
Shakib Al Hasan dnp 
Ravi Ashwin dnp
Simon Harmer dnp
Ravi Jadeja dnp
AB De Villiers dnp
Aaron Finch dnp 
Jeetan Patel dnp

Overall

JP Duminy - 761
Joe Root - 622
Shakib Al Hasan - 608
Mitchell Marsh - 605
Jos Buttler - 597
Aaron Finch - 591
Virat Kohli- 538
Kane Williamson - 497
Sunil Narine- 487
Nathan Lyon - 466
Ravi Ashwin - 435
Jofra Archer - 405
Rashid Khan - 390
Simon Harmer - 351
George Bailey - 344
AB De Villiers- 321
Quinton de Kock - 315
Hashim Amla - 289
Dean Elgar- 286
Steve Smith - 275
Shaun Marsh- 256
David Warner - 215
Jeetan Patel - 108
Ravi Jadeja - ytp