A.B. De Villiers - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Sceptics of AB De Villiers' batting prowess seem to abound on Twitter. Having a quick peruse of Twitter throws up people who are sceptical about the Earth being round or climate change. All three of these theories annoy me equally. These sceptics take their knives out whenever they have the opportunity. At the back end of last week, De Villiers got out for 1 against Mumbai and the keyboard warriors laid in to him. Where are they now after two complete performances from the veteran South African? With 158 runs from two games at a strike rate of 230.76 and 226.66 I think it may be a long while before we see any criticism raise it's head again. He currently sits second place in the overall IPL run scorers with 280 across his 6 games - only 3 runs behind Ambati Rayudu. De Villiers' ability has come to the fore at just the time Bangalore need him. Over the same two games, Virat Kohli has gone off the boil somewhat. After his table- topping 300 points last week, he got a mere 68 this week. The two Bangalore men's varying fortunes coupled with Kane Williamson's 213 brings the threeway tussle of IPL batsmen very much back in focus. Kohli still has the edge but has cut his 230 point lead down to a mere 10. Kane Williamson sits just the other side of the dormant Joe Root, 51 points behind De Villiers. 

With six weeks at the top of the table and an overall lead of 166 under his belt, Rashid Khan must be feeling mighty confident. This confidence was needed this week after his poor performance in Week 16 - and the Afghanistan spinner came out fighting. 7 wickets from three games saw him back in true form and able to place himself 4th in this week's top point scorers. His stand out performance of the week were figures of 4-1-11-2 against Mumbai - picking up a rare 5 points for an IPL maiden. His 228 points is the most he has gained in 5 weeks and he will be looking to consolidate this over the next few weeks of the IPL. I am genuinely beginning to wonder if Rashid Khan topping our overall table is something that might continue for the rest of 2018. 

The success of Punjab in this year's IPL has come as a surprise to many - and the captaincy of Ravi Ashwin has played a huge part in this. Despite this, his yield of points has been exceptionally low. Scoring a mere 70 points from 3 games is not going to see the Indian spinner rocket up the table any time soon. This is further highlighted by the fact that only 20 of these points have come from wickets taken. For a long period of time Ashwin was rooted firmly in the top ten of the overall league but is off the pace now and finds himself 14th. In contrast to this, the returning Jofra Archer will be very pleased with his week, despite similar points to Ashwin. At the end of January the much fancied Archer was just outside the top ten, however a long spell out of the game with injury saw him drop to second bottom of the overall table. His return from injury and debut for Rajasthan this week saw him dominate the game against Mumbai with three wickets in his final over. He has got a long way to go but a successful IPL could see him end up mid table by the end of the tournament. 

With 1053 points, it looks like Aaron Finch is having a good year but in the first couple of months he was in the top five. His form since the end of February has been absolutely atrocious and has seen him drop down the table with some alacrity. Since his 151* for Victoria against Perth on 24th February, Finch has batted in 9 innings in both the Sheffield Shield and in the IPL. From these 9 innings he has scored just 53 runs at an average of 5.89. His high score in this time is a mere 14* for Punjab against Hyderabad. This week he also suffered the ignominy of being one of a handful of players who represented his team in a match but picked up zero points. He and Ravi Jadeja are by far the two players whose 2018 form have disappointed. The fact that he has put his name in the frame for a potential Australian captaincy is ridiculous to the point of laughable. 

Week 

AB De Villiers - 288
Jeetan Patel - 255
Simon Harmer - 249
Rashid Khan - 228
Kane Williamson - 213
Shakib Al Hasan - 164
Shaun Marsh - 151
Quinton de Kock - 121
Jofra Archer- 98
Hashim Amla - 96
Sunil Narine- 87
Ravi Ashwin - 70
Virat Kohli - 68
Dean Elgar - 64
Ravi Jadeja - 53
Aaron Finch - 30 
Jos Buttler - 26
George Bailey - dnp 
JP Duminy- dnp 
Nathan Lyon - dnp 
Mitchell Marsh - dnp 
Joe Root- dnp 
Steve Smith - dnp 
David Warner - dnp 

Overall

Rashid Khan - 2426
Simon Harmer - 2260
Sunil Narine- 1934
Nathan Lyon - 1789
Jeetan Patel - 1709
JP Duminy - 1671
Virat Kohli- 1640
AB De Villiers- 1630
Joe Root - 1615
Kane Williamson -1579
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
Jos Buttler - 1316
Quinton de Kock - 1196
Ravi Ashwin - 1135
Shakib Al Hasan - 1099
Aaron Finch - 1053
Dean Elgar- 996
Hashim Amla - 901
David Warner - 752
Shaun Marsh- 716
Steve Smith - 706
Jofra Archer - 648
George Bailey - 631
Ravi Jadeja - 549