Simon Harmer - The Best Cricketer of the Week

What with no completed Test matches this week, there is a severe paucity of cricket to write about this week. In fact only five of our Cricketers played. Despite this, it does not detract from two outstanding performances in domestic cricket for two outstanding spinners. Between them Simon Harmer and Jeetan Patel got thirteen wickets. This week's cricketer of the week, Simon Harmer, bagged the lion's share with 8 for the Warriors against the Knights with Patel chipping in a fivefer in his first innings for Wellington against Central Districts. Both of these domestic stalwarts have coupled their wicket taking impetus with rock bottom economies, with Patel's figures of 19-12-13-0 being the most eye-catching. The spin twins are having fans of the County Championship salivating with the hope they will continue this fine form in the coming months. 

Another 330 points for Rashid Khan further extends his dominance in the overall table despite his team's poor form in the World Cup Qualifiers. He is also the first player to break the 2000 point barrier in the overall point league, with Simon Harmer 52 points away from that accolade. In what has been a very wicket heavy week for the top scorers in the weekly league, the Afghanistan spinner bagged 8 in two games - meaning that the top three for the week shared 21 wickets between them in their three different tournaments. Whilst he will be at a personal low, Rashid can cling on to a great stat. The spinner has by far the highest wicket tally for any player after 43 ODIS at 99 - with 12 more than second place Mitchell Starc.

Ending the big hitters section, we can now look at two Cricketers who played but maybe did not contribute as much as they'd have liked. Shakib Al Hassan played in the final of the Nidahas Trophy and, with a great sense of deja vu, did exactly the same as he did the previous week - scored 7 runs and got one wicket. This gave him his second consecutive score of 27. Despite the relatively small total posted, due to the lack of other cricket going on this week, he has still moved up the table two places to sit in sixteenth place. On top of this today is his birthday - a welcome present for the 31 year old. 

But one player who will be disappointed is JP Duminy - who joins the small list of players who have played a game but scored zero points. Going against Cricket South Africa, Duminy decided to join his Islamabad teammates in Pakistan and - despite the potential risk - did not bat nor bowl. Up until this point Duminy was the only player to have registered points in every game week - an impressive spell brought to an end. 

Week

Simon Harmer - 355
Jeetan Patel - 340
Rashid Khan - 280
Shakib Al Hasan - 27
Hashim Amla - dnp 
Jofra Archer - dnp 
Ravi Ashwin - dnp
George Bailey - dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
Quinton de Kock- dnp 
AB De Villiers - dnp 
JP Duminy - dnp 
Dean Elgar - dnp 
Aaron Finch - dnp 
Ravi Jadeja- dnp 
Virat Kohli - dnp 
Nathan Lyon - dnp 
Mitchell Marsh - dnp 
Shaun Marsh - dnp 
Sunil Narine - dnp 
Joe Root - dnp 
Steve Smith - dnp 
David Warner - dnp 
Kane Williamson - dnp 

Overall

Rashid Khan - 2038
Simon Harmer - 1948
JP Duminy - 1659
Sunil Narine- 1450
Joe Root - 1308
Mitchell Marsh - 1245
Virat Kohli- 1231
Nathan Lyon - 1225
Jos Buttler - 1026
Aaron Finch - 999
Kane Williamson -906
Jeetan Patel - 884
Ravi Ashwin - 878
AB De Villiers- 778
Quinton de Kock - 670
Shakib Al Hasan - 662
David Warner - 650
Steve Smith - 633
Hashim Amla - 598
George Bailey - 560
Dean Elgar- 557
Jofra Archer - 550
Shaun Marsh- 506
Ravi Jadeja - 412