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