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