Sunil Narine - The Best Cricketer of the Week

I feel that at this time of year cricket does not know what it wants. The razzmatazz or the traditional? The superstars or the future stars? The bright colours and the flashing lights or the white, the red and the tranquility. This week it is the IPL stars that win out due to the fact that the County Championship season will (theoretically) start today. It will be an interesting battle in itself to see whether those participating in the four day games in England will get the better of their lower scoring but higher paid compatriots over in India. It is Sunil Narine who has taken to the competition like a duck to a County ground with some electric performances for Kolkata. Narine seems to have something of an affinity with the IPL whereby he manages to imbue himself with batting capabilities that he seems otherwise incapable of in other competitions. This week saw him open the batting for his franchise twice; once he crapped out and the other time he scored a 19 ball half century at a strike rate of 263.15. This highlights the affinity that the West Indian has for this competition. This was his second fifty in the IPL whereas his highest score in the less glitzy PSL stands at a mere 17. For a player who cemented themselves in the top ten with prolific wicket taking for Trinidad and Tobago, it seems unusual to credit him for high impact batting but if he were to perform as he did against Bangalore rather than Chennai he will soon be leapfrogging the non-IPL playing JP Duminy and Nathan Lyon and challenging for a top three place. 

There is a naturally distilled pressure cooker-style quality that these short T20 competitions lend to proceedings. The fact that you are never more than a few days away from your next game allows you to build up form or to continue poor spells with the ball or the bat. It also breeds a natural competition between players. During January's BBL competition my eye was continually drawn to the tussle between Rashid Khan and Jofra Archer who were jostling for position at the bottom of the top ten for the whole month - from there their two paths have dramatically diverted with one at the top of the overall rankings and the other second bottom. This time out I can see three top batsmen all wedged together who could be involved in a three way dog fight over the course of the competition. Hyderabad's Kane Williamson (on 1172 points) joins Bangalore's Virat Kohli (1272) and AB De Villiers (1194) in ninth to eleventh positions with exactly 100 points between them. As it stands it is Kohli who has overall dominance over the other two, however he only got 41 this week from his one game - this is slightly less than the per game average of Williamson who averages 46 points across his two games and is dwarfed by de Villiers' who got 94 points in his one game against Kolkata. At the moment it is the two Bangalore team mates who are  butting heads at the foot of the top ten but Williamson will soon find himself in the mix. 

If rest leads to good performances there are a group of four players that are due to hit the ground running in this tournament. Jos Buttler, Ravi Ashwin and Shakib Al Hasan have all not played a game since the middle of March whilst Ravi Jadeja has not played since the final of the Vijay Hazare Trophy at the end of February. So who of these very well rested four has been using their time effectively? The best performing of these four is Hyderabad's Shakib who got 92 across his two games. Shakib thrives in T20 competitions and loves playing games hot on the heels of one another - something that the IPL more than caters for. The player was riding high in January before his injury and subsequent tumble down the overall table. Potentially his return to fitness will see him crawl back up. Jos Buttler was not too far off Shakib's pace either with a Narine-like double with one poor showing against Hyderabad yielding just 6 runs but then got 29 off 18 balls in the truncated game against Delhi. Buttler's spell away from the game has seen him settle just outside the top ten and he would be eager to put himself along side Kane Williamson and contribute to the batting battle discussed above. Two players whose form is slightly more worrying are the two Indian bowlers. Ravi Ashwin has only played one game in the IPL but yielded just one wicket from it. It is unfair to judge the Punjab captain on one performance but he will be looking to change a run of poor form that dates back to the start of February. It is coming up to two months since Ashwin last got anything more than two wickets in a match, something he will be desperate to redress. Another player who is in a slump is Ravi Jadeja. It seems like 2018 might be a fairly moribund year for the spinner. Despite Saurashtra's journey to the final of the Vijay Hazare Trophy, it was an ignominious ending for Jadeja who was eventually not given a chance with the ball whatsoever. Before his most recent game for Chennai this week, his last wicket in any game for any team was all the way back in Delhi for India against Sri Lanka on the 2nd December last year. He will hope for a little more faith from his coach Stephen Fleming than he was shown by Saurashtra otherwise he will start to fear for his position in the Indian team. 

Week 

Sunil Narine - 182

Rashid Khan - 100

AB De Villiers- 94

Shakib Al Hasan - 92

Kane Williamson - 92

Jos Buttler - 85

Ravi Jadeja - 43

Virat Kohli - 41

Ravi Ashwin- 30

Quinton de Kock- 14

Jofra Archer - dnp 

Hashim Amla - dnp 

George Bailey - dnp 

JP Duminy - dnp 

Dean Elgar- dnp 

Aaron Finch- dnp 

Simon Harmer - dnp 

Nathan Lyon - dnp 

Mitchell Marsh - dnp 

Shaun Marsh - dnp 

Jeetan Patel - dnp 

Joe Root - dnp 

Steve Smith - dnp 

David Warner - dnp 

Overall

Rashid Khan - 2178
Simon Harmer - 2011
Nathan Lyon - 1789
JP Duminy - 1671

Sunil Narine- 1632
Joe Root - 1615
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
Jeetan Patel - 1414
Virat Kohli- 1272
AB De Villiers- 1194
Kane Williamson -1172
Jos Buttler - 1111
Aaron Finch - 999
Dean Elgar- 932

Ravi Ashwin - 908
Quinton de Kock - 895
Shakib Al Hasan - 754
David Warner - 752
Hashim Amla - 723
Steve Smith - 706
George Bailey - 631
Shaun Marsh- 565
Jofra Archer - 550
Ravi Jadeja - 455