Simon Harmer - The Best Cricketer of the Week

The last time someone put up as epic a fight centred on maidens as Simon Harmer has this week, it was during the Battle of Troy. Both of our County Championship brethren picked up a huge amount of points for their maidens scored but, Cricketer of the Week, Simon Harmer's 581 consisted of 32% maidens - a statistic usually only reserved for the House of Commons. It has been an effective week for both Harmer and Patel and these hard Summer months that squeeze in two County games in a week, whilst undoubtably tiring, do boost the total points scored for the bowlers participating in them. Simon Harmer now has a 780 run lead on his historic rival Rashid Khan and it is in those two very different players where you can see the difference in points picked up. Whilst Rashid Khan is eminently more well known and will have played more games over the course of 2018, it is the destructive nature of the bowler in long form cricket that allows one to regularly pick up massive hauls as the South African spinner has done this week. Whilst the title appears to be moving away from Essex, it may be that Harmer's personal lead is now insurmountable.

When I refer to Rashid Khan as Harmer's historical rival, it is because it is no longer he that most closely pushes the South African for Pole position but Jeetan Patel whose 496 points this week gives him a narrow advantage over the Afghanistani spinner. Two impressive performances, including a match winning effort in the Day/Night match against Durham, has seen the New Zealand bowler only spend a week in third spot, having overtaken Sunil Narine last week, before taking silver position this week. If you got points for captaincy he would have further pulled away from third position, thanks to a gutsy declaration that arguably won Warwickshire the game. With twenty wickets taken last year in the T20 Blast, his point scoring may still continue.

It was not only Patel who was shaking things up at the top of the table this week. The Jos Buttler Sumer of Batting Pyrotechnics rumbled on for another week and his score of 311 would have been enough for him to have ended top of the table on your average week, instead he will have to be content with pushing a dormant Sunil Narine down to fifth place and claiming fourth place as his own. Since the start of May the Englishman has scored 916 runs and picked up 1605 points, moving him from 12th to his current fourth spot. This has undoubtably been a very good summer for England's recalled and rejuvenated hero.

I enjoy pitting players against each other on the eve of big tournaments and watching them battle it out. Last time we did this was when we watched the threeway dog fight between De Villiers, Kohli and Williamson throughout the IPL - a battle emphatically won by the Hyderabad batsman. Kohli can join another battle as we approach the series between England and India. The Indian captain and his English counterpart sit in 8th and 7th place respectively and both are coming out of a poor patch of form. Kohli's injury comeback against Ireland this week saw him score exactly 0 points whilst Root will be disappointed with his Summer where he has yet to do anything Earth-shattering but has been consistent. The pair are separated by a mere 74 points so it is anyone's for the taking. Will the home captain prevail or will Kohli break his English voodoo and push himself up the table?

After thirteen weeks of ducks, Steve Smith returned to cricket last night in front of a handful of people in King City, Canada. His yield of 93 points was enough to see movement at the bottom of the table for the first time in months. The ex-Australian captain is now 47 points above fellow disgraced Aussie, David Warner - who plays tonight for Winnipeg. There are now 402 points between these two Aussies and next placed Ravi Jadeja. It remains to be seen if the parochial Canadian bowling might still salvage the year for the two antipodean cast offs - but my word it is strange to see the mighty so far fallen.

Week

Simon Harmer - 581
Jeetan Patel- 496
Jos Buttler - 311
Aaron Finch - 196
Steve Smith- 93
Joe Root - 56
Nathan Lyon - 11
Virat Kohli - 0
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
Hashim Amla - dnp
Jofra Archer - dnp
Ravi Ashwin- dnp
George Bailey - dnp
Quinton De Kock- dnp
AB De Villiers- dnp
JP Duminy - dnp
Dean Elgar - dnp
Ravi Jadeja - dnp
Rashid Khan - dnp
Nathan Lyon - dnp
Mitchell Marsh - dnp
Sunil Narine- dnp
David Warner - dnp
Kane Williamson - dnp

Overall

Simon Harmer - 4122
Jeetan Patel - 3375
Rashid Khan - 3342
Jos Buttler - 2921
Sunil Narine- 2617
Kane Williamson -2405
Joe Root - 2245
Virat Kohli- 2171
AB De Villiers- 2010
Aaron Finch - 1870
Nathan Lyon - 1833
JP Duminy - 1737
Ravi Ashwin - 1588
Hashim Amla - 1524
Shaun Marsh- 1498
Dean Elgar- 1484
Shakib Al Hasan - 1439
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
Jofra Archer - 1409
Quinton de Kock - 1292
Ravi Jadeja - 1201
Steve Smith - 799
David Warner - 752
George Bailey - 631

Shaun Marsh - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Lionel Messi and Argentina are very much in the thoughts of those of us whose sporting proclivities also lean towards Football. For those who don't know - an eminently talented player weighted down by a country's gaze could not lift an unbalanced team away from humiliation. I do not know how keen Cricketer of the Week Shaun Marsh and his team mate Aaron Finch are on soccer but they might feel a certain affinity with the diminutive Argentinian captain. Whilst the eldest Marsh brother claims the title of Cricketer of the Week, a mere five points (or half a catch) separates him from the newly invigorated Australian opener Finch. Despite their impressive individual scores they are on the verge of being whitewashed by England - and have been on the receiving end of some of the most damaging scenes with a bat since Bruce Wayne fell down that well. If there were any bowlers on this list this year (something I doubt will be an occurrence next year as well) I feel their points total would be something of a different tale. As old fashioned batsmen, Marsh and Finch, who offer very little even in the field, have been largely protected from the decimation offered by Bairstow and Roy. Marsh's performances over the last fortnight has seen him improve his position on our overall table. He now raises himself to the dizzying heights of 16th and is a mere 4 points off Dean Elgar. With the final ODI today, a few runs would see him placed eminently midtable - especially if he improves his strike rate which has been laconic at best. 

Nathan Lyon returned to the fray this week after a lengthily absence of ten weeks. Whilst his 33 points do not represent a particularly good week, he will be happy to be featuring in a cricket game - especially in the one day format. Whilst his week's points are nothing to be proud about, the Australian spinner was so prolific in the early months of the year that, despite his ten week absence, he is still in our top ten overall. He finds himself just below AB De Villiers, who had a whole IPL season, and JP Duminy, who similar to him had a stonking start to the year but has tailed off. With the success rate of English spinners, we may well see the Goat return in this last ODI to pick up some more points. 

There was only one player who was active this week that was not involved in the Anglo-Australian tussle. Having learnt he would be eligible for England for next year's Ashes, Jofra Archer responded with 182 points - his second highest weekly score of 2018. Whilst he is usually seen as a wicket taker, the Sussex man did a good job of strangling the opposition this week and picked up 35 points from maidens against Durham. He joins Shaun Marsh in slowly creeping up the table putting real daylight between himself and Quinton de Kock, who is now 117 points behind him. With the T20 Blast imminent we could see the English bowler really blast up the table. 

Canada have not been on the cricketing scene for many a year. Rewind a decade and they were one of the more competent Associate nations but poor decisions and mismanagement have seen the likes of Ireland, Afghanistan, Netherlands and Scotland overshadow them. No wonder Steve Smith and David Warner felt an affinity towards the newly formed Global T20 Canada tournament having been overshadowed this year by scandal. The two prolific batsman begin their campaigns this week with Smith's Toronto Nationals kicking the tournament off on Thursday and Warner's Winnipeg Hawks making their bow the following day. Could we see them register enough points to make them credible in our overall table? They are desperately off the pace with a gulf of 449 points between Warner and nearest rival Ravi Jadeja. Only time will tell if their form and the expected amateur nature of some of the Canadian bowlers might throw a few surprises at us. 

Week

Shaun Marsh - 195
Aaron Finch - 190
Jofra Archer - 182
Jos Buttler - 165 
Joe Root - 51
Nathan Lyon - 33

Hashim Amla- dnp 
Ravi Ashwin- dnp 
George Bailey - dnp 
Quinton De Kock- dnp 
AB De Villiers- dnp 
JP Duminy- dnp 
Dean Elgar - dnp 
Simon Harmer - dnp 
Rashid Khan - dnp 
Virat Kohli- dnp 
Mitchell Marsh- dnp 
Sunil Narine- dnp 
Jeetan Patel - dnp 
Steve Smith - dnp 
David Warner - dnp 
Kane Williamson - dnp 

Overall

Simon Harmer - 3541
Rashid Khan - 3342
Jeetan Patel - 2879
Sunil Narine- 2617
Jos Buttler - 2610
Kane Williamson -2405
Joe Root - 2189
Virat Kohli- 2171
AB De Villiers- 2010
Nathan Lyon - 1822
JP Duminy - 1737
Aaron Finch - 1674
Ravi Ashwin - 1588
Hashim Amla - 1524
Dean Elgar- 1484
Shaun Marsh- 1480
Shakib Al Hasan - 1439
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
Jofra Archer - 1409
Quinton de Kock - 1292
Ravi Jadeja - 1201
David Warner - 752
Steve Smith - 706
George Bailey - 631

Simon Harmer - The Best Cricketer of the Week

I am limited in who I can write about this week with only 9 of our 24 in action. I am going to direct myself towards some duos who have impressed. 

A pair I return to regularly is the County Championship's Simon Harmer and Jeetan Patel. Harmer has escaped from his Royal London One Day Cup malaise and returned to his big scoring ways in the four day game against Yorkshire. His yield of 393 is his highest for a month and sees him named Cricketer of the Week yet again. He has also overtaken Rashid Khan whose 89 points this week sees him fall back to second - 199 points behind his South African rival. With no Afghanistan fixtures forthcoming, this could be Harmer's chance to force the lead to an unattainable level as the English summer progresses. Jeetan Patel is another player who is rapidly climbing up the table. His 218 points this week puts clear daylight between him and fourth place Sunil Narine. With the West Indian spinner not playing for a fortnight in which Warwickshire play three fixtures, the top three could really draw away as we approach July. 

Which players have impressed the most in England matches this week? Callum McLeod? Shaun Marsh? Moeen Ali? From our list it is two unlikely beneficiaries who sit sixth and seventh in the weekly league. Joe Root has been comparatively quiet this week but his 201 is his highest weekly yield since Week 11 when he was playing warm up matches against a New Zealand XI. Whilst we have been more used to seeing him pick up points for his bowling of late, it is refreshing to see the England Test captain back in the driving seat with the bat - and all with healthy run rates. Whilst he is neither winning nor deciding games he is contributing. On the other side of that particular coin is Jos Buttler. This week he scored 31 points less than Joe Root (albeit playing one fewer game) but his performance in yesterday's ODI was both decisive and match- winning. His ability to get big scores is a trait he has carried over from his IPL campaign and he is using it to great effect against the Aussies. The Englishmen sit in 8th and 5th place respectively in the overall rankings. 

He has had a torrid season of it so far but Shaun Marsh's Week was undoubtably his best of 2018. It is always good when one of the lower ranked players overall pops his head up near the top of the weekly rankings and we have seen that this week from the Australian batsman. Nineteenth out of twenty four in the overall league, Marsh's 155 in two games sees him finish 5th this week. Consistency is the watch word for Marsh. This century is his first for Australia since 2013. He'll need to pick up the pace in order to escape the bottom of our table. Marsh's team mate, Aaron Finch, has proved that his big scoring Week last time out was something of a blip. This week his score of 19 is back to his most recent form of pretty unimpressive batting. He has found himself sliding down the order for Australia and might find his place under pressure on the form of this week. The fact that the Australian team has only two competing players from our list has shown the huge effect that the ball tampering scandal has had on the ODI side. Whilst Marsh and Finch's weeks were both markedly different, the fact that Messrs. Smith and Warner are gearing up for the inaugural Global T20 Canada league means they should probably be counting their blessings. 

Starting the week in uncharacteristically poor positions, the Indian spin twins of Ravi Ashwin and Ravi Jadeja took advantage of a very green looking Afghanistan to claim 458 between them. With 240 points, Jadeja has pulled off a Shaun Marsh-style performance of his own and managed to place second this week despite being bottom of the overall table (if you discount currently inactive players.) This really does go against his disappointing performances this year for Saurashtra and Chennai. When Jadeja is representing India he steps it up in a way that he struggles to in domestic cricket. Overall he really does find himself off the pace and is bottom of a pile of four players between 1200 and 1300 points and a long way off Mitchell Marsh in 17th. Another Indian player who would be disappointed with his overall ranking is 12th placed Ashwin. Despite scoring less than Jadeja this week, he has improved his overall position more than any other player. His 218 points saw him overtaking Hashim Amla, Dean Elgar, Finch, Shakib Al Hasan and Mitchell Marsh in what is a very close middle of the table. It remains to be seen whether these two senior figures will play a huge part in the upcoming Irish games but Ashwin is ideally placed for a big push in the forthcoming series against England. 

Rashid Khan - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Tracking Rashid Khan's season has been difficult. To the casual observer Rashid is constantly on the up and up but, as I have documented here previously, he has long periods on the crap side of average. His BBL season, his early form in the World Cup Qualifiers and patches in the IPL both showed this - however he is here midway through the year reclaiming his place at the top of the overall table and claiming the best cricketer of the week for the third time overall and the second time in three weeks. Rashid brought the same form that saw Hyderabad surge into the IPL to the three T20 games against Bangladesh, where the more established team were put to the sword comprehensively. Over the three games Rashid was prolific getting 8 wickets including a fourfer in the middle game. He did keep some inconsistency up his sleeve for us though in this game. He conceded nine runs for no wickets in his first two overs but then followed this up in his next two overs by leaking three runs and claiming four wickets. I fully expected his scoring to have slowed this week against Bangladesh but Shakib's side rolled over for the new boys of world Cricket. The Afghanistan spinner now has an 105 run lead over Simon Harmer in the overall table. 

This has been a bad week for Rashid Khan to be performing so well if you are a fan of Simon Harmer. The South African bowler has been having a great 2018 for the Warriors and Essex but is in a spell of poor form. His fortnightly total of 53 is his lowest for any 2 weeks of 2018 which has allowed Rashid to overtake him. The two have such a huge lead over Jeetan Patel, newly installed in third place, that Harmer will not worry unduly about losing second place but he cannot let his Afghanistani compatriot get too far away from him or he will run away with the competition. Essex's return to County Championship action may help the spinner get his form back and challenge for the top spot next week. 

At the beginning of the year I described Jofra Archer as a rising talent. That rise has been somewhat stilted by injury and some underwhelming performances in his first IPL foray. His season could have been so different though. At the end of January he was vying with Rashid Khan just outside the top ten. One bowler went one way up the table and the other went the other way. The young English bowler showed his capabilities again this week with three matches against three very different opponents to get his highest total of points in 2018. He also came head to head with two players higher up the overall league than him and finished the victor. The most impressive performance came against the most impressive opposition. Archer bagged 3-62 against the touring Australians in a tour match. The quality of these batsmen were undoubtably as he removed Aaron Finch, Marcus Stoinis and (less impressively) Jhye Richardson. He also reminded us of his acumen with the bat in the Royal London One Day Cup game against Simon Harmer's Essex - scoring 33 off 14 balls and picking up 40 strike rate points. It is no little wonder that the ECB are trying to tweak the rules to let this young man play in next year's Ashes. He currently sits near the bottom of the table but is not in the real relegation zone made up by Jadeja, Warner, Smith and Bailey. A decent summer could see him move mid table. 

When mentioning Aaron Finch being dismissed by Archer above, you may have thought that he had a bad week. On the contrary, Finch has had his best week as a married man and his highest total since Week 9 - his only table topping score of 2018 thus far. Whilst 78 against Sussex and 54 against Middlesex would not be scores to write home about in normal circumstances, Finch's form in recent months has been dire. He does appear to be hitting form at just the right time for his Australia duties. After his recall from being dropped by Punjab midway through the season he has been slowly but surely upping his scoring rate and, if the trend were to continue, we might expect to see the Victorian scoring centuries in the series against England. This has especially been the case when you look at the amount of boundaries he is scoring - 15 across the two tour games. Throughout the early months of the year, Finch was rooted in the top ten of our overall league. He is now drastically off the pace but a decent showing against England would do him no harm. 

Week

Rashid Khan - 287
Jofra Archer - 233
Aaron Finch- 222
Shakib Al Hassan - 118 
Jos Buttler - 100 
Joe Root- 93
Jeetan Patel - 68
Shaun Marsh- 59
Simon Harmer - 42
Hashim Amla- dnp 
Ravi Ashwin - dnp 
George Bailey - dnp 
Quintin de Kock- dnp 
AB De Villiers- dnp 
JP Duminy- dnp 
Dean Elgar - dnp 
Ravi Jadeja- dnp 
Virat Kohli - dnp 
Nathan Lyon - dnp 
Mitchell Marsh- dnp 
Sunil Narine- dnp 
Steve Smith - dnp 
David Warner - dnp 
Kane Williamson - dnp 

Overall

Rashid Khan - 3253
Simon Harmer - 3148
Jeetan Patel - 2661
Sunil Narine- 2617
Kane Williamson -2405
Jos Buttler - 2275
Virat Kohli- 2171
AB De Villiers- 2010
Joe Root - 1937
Nathan Lyon - 1789
JP Duminy - 1737
Hashim Amla - 1524
Dean Elgar- 1484
Aaron Finch - 1465
Shakib Al Hasan - 1439
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
Ravi Ashwin - 1370
Quinton de Kock - 1292
Jofra Archer - 1227
Shaun Marsh- 1070
Ravi Jadeja - 961
David Warner - 752
Steve Smith - 706
George Bailey - 631

Jeetan Patel - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Jeetan Patel will never get as much credit as Simon Harmer due to the piece of silverware that sits in Essex's trophy cabinet - but this week the Warwickshire captain tops our weekly table for the fourth time. This draws him equal with his South African counterpart, Harmer. It has been a week of Royal London One Day Cup toil for Patel, who is used to having things easier for Wellington. He has has two complete washouts in the last three matches and a couple of average performances including a single wicket against Northamptonshire. His position at the top of the weekly table is largely down to last night's 3/51 against Durham and contributions in the field in that match and in the previous. He also benefits from playing two games when a majority of point scoring contributors have only (just about) managed one. The New Zealand bowler still sits in fourth position overall but is drawing in on third place Sunil Narine who has a period of time out of the game after his IPL toils. 

The phrase 'famine or feast' has been applied to Rashid Khan throughout 2018 with a long list of inconsistent performances in both the World Cup Qualifiers as well as the IPL. He took this to a new height this week with two high profile performances that show off two very different sides of his character. In last week's IPL final defeat, Rashid would have been disappointed to not get anything in the wicket column - however his economy was strangling low. His economy of 6 from his 4 overs was coupled with that rare of a thing - a T20 maiden. This does not hide the fact that he got a mere 15 points from this game. His other performance came this week for a World-XI playing the West Indies at Lord's for charity. Here the Afghanistan spinner got the prize wickets of Evin Lewis and Marlon Samuels but had a sky high economy - exactly double what he got in the IPL final. Overall it would have been a disappointing week for the man who sits second in our overall table losing, as he did, both games. He is regularly placing outside the top five in our weekly table and may be concerned about his placing with Bangladesh and India round the corner for Afghanistan. 

They need resilience these Cricketers. Five weeks ago, AB De Villiers was the best cricketer of the week and then was at the foot of the table the following week. This week Simon Harmer has done the same thing with a yield of just 11 points from his two games this week. This equates to one run and a catch in the game against Surrey. A fallow period for wickets for the best cricketer in the world statistically. The table topping South African bowler can take hope from the fact that second place Rashid Khan also had a poor week but will not be able to rest on his laurels as Essex try and reach the knock out stage of the Royal London One Day Cup. 

Week 

Jeetan Patel - 160
Dean Elgar- 117
Jos Buttler - 111
Joe Root - 92
Kane Williamson - 67 
Rashid Khan - 64
Shakib Al Hasan - 53
Jofra Archer - 29
Ravi Jadeja - 20
Simon Harmer - 11
Hashim Amla - dnp 
Ravi Ashwin- dnp 
George Bailey - dnp 
Quinton De Kock - dnp 
AB De Villiers- dnp 
JP Duminy- dnp 
Aaron Finch- dnp 
Virat Kohli- dnp 
Nathan Lyon - dnp 
Mitchell Marsh- dnp 
Shaun Marsh - dnp 
Sunil Narine- dnp 
Steve Smith - dnp 
David Warner - dnp 

Overall

Simon Harmer - 3106
Rashid Khan - 2966
Sunil Narine- 2617
Jeetan Patel - 2593
Kane Williamson -2405
Jos Buttler - 2175
Virat Kohli- 2171
AB De Villiers- 2010
Joe Root - 1844
Nathan Lyon - 1789
JP Duminy - 1737
Hashim Amla - 1524
Dean Elgar- 1484
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
Ravi Ashwin - 1370
Shakib Al Hasan - 1321
Quinton de Kock - 1292
Aaron Finch - 1243
Shaun Marsh- 1011
Jofra Archer - 994
Ravi Jadeja - 961
David Warner - 752
Steve Smith - 706
George Bailey - 631