Jofra Archer - The Best Cricketer of the Week

The rise and rise of Jofra Archer continued this week with the young West Indian Englishman continuing to develop his acumen as an all rounder. Last week I compared the young man to David Warner and said that what the former brought to the party was the ability to change a game with bat, ball and in the field - this continued this week. Strangely enough, for a player that is widely considered a bowler, he is not at the top of the tree this week for his wickets alone. Despite the fact he got only two wickets in the County Championship Divison 2 game against Derbyshire and a further one in the T20 blast game vs Durham, he also picked up 65 points in maidens and a further 60 for some stranglingly low economies. He has also been the ambassador for a trend that we have started to see in the longer form cricket for posting heady strike rates, the likes of which were never seen in years gone by. Archer's 31 off 19 balls was not the only exhibition of hard hitting this week. Aaron Finch's 32 off 34 balls for Surrey against Lancashire and Jos Buttler's 39 off 32 balls for England against India all stand out in the strike rate column. It is perhaps no surprise that the trio of Archer, Finch and Buttler - whilst all very much impressing in the longer form of the game - are forged as batsmen in the pyrotechnical fires of T20 and are able to bring this across to the Test or County Championship arena. This is all well and good in certain scenarios as long as it is controlled and a mode that you can switch in and out of as you please; if it is a sign of a one track mind you better hope that that track is flat.

There have been times when Joe Root and Virat Kohli's performances have been so similar it has been almost unbelievable. This was put to bed emphatically this week with Virat Kohli pulling away from his counterpart in a dramatic fashion. The 260 points scored by the Indian captain by far outstrips the paltry 59 scored by Root. This has been underlined by Kohli's sudden lurch up the overall table. Kohli has jumped over Sunil Narine into 6th place. In contrast Joe Root has dropped two places down the table to tenth, having been overtaken by Jofra Archer and Kane Williamson. For the pair, who have been so long inseparable in 7th and 8th place it really is a strong upper hand for the touring captain. Root's position in the top ten is unchallenged for now due to the fact there is a gap of 688 between him and the next highest scoring active player in Ravi Ashwin - but for the Yorkshireman to be looking down rather than up the table must be dispiriting for him. 

That old adage of there being nothing either good or bad but thinking making it so could be put to the Test depending on which one of our representatives you ask about the quality of the CPL. Two players who would err on the thinking bad side would be Sunil Narine and Hashim Amla. Sunil Narine, for the third time in 2018, registered a 0-point game in Trinidad and Tobago's outing against Jamaica - getting a duck and figures of 0-42. It again makes you wonder how a player so devastating in the IPL falls short so often in other T20 franchises. Another player trying his hand in the CPL is Hashim Amla who continues a rather unimpressive run of form with a score of just 15 from Barbados' game against Jamaica. On the other side of this coin is two players who have been rather used to turning over coins and seeing huge piles of steaming excrement rather than any kind of luck. Whilst David Warner's form with the bat is still not electric, he scored two consecutive scores over ten for the first time since July this week and got 95 points. Steve Smith was rather more impressive and posted 143 which included 40 points for bowling - an unusually high yield for him. Whilst 95 and 143 are not hugely impressive scores they are enough for both men to leapfrog Ravi Jadeja and make their first upward movement in the game since their banishment from mainstream cricket. Their next target is fellow Australian Mitchell Marsh in 19th place. The bowler, who has not played since March, is 168 points ahead of Warner and 168 for Smith. 

Week

Jofra Archer- 271
Virat Kohli- 260
Simon Harmer - 253
Jos Buttler - 235
Rashid Khan - 200
Kane Williamson- 188
Steve Smith- 143
Jeetan Patel- 107
Ravi Ashwin - 105
David Warner - 97
Aaron Finch-95
Joe Root - 59
Hashim Amla - 15 
Sunil Narine - 0 
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
George Bailey - dnp 
Quinton De Kock- dnp 
AB De Villiers- dnp 
JP Duminy - dnp 
Dean Elgar - dnp 
Ravi Jadeja - dnp 
Nathan Lyon - dnp 
Mitchell Marsh- dnp 
Shaun Marsh - dnp 

Overall

Simon Harmer - 4699
Jeetan Patel - 4233
Rashid Khan - 4019
Jos Buttler - 3713
Aaron Finch - 3343
Virat Kohli- 3309
Jofra Archer - 3181
Sunil Narine- 3131
Kane Williamson - 3094
Joe Root - 3073
Shakib Al Hasan - 2582
Ravi Ashwin - 2385
JP Duminy - 2336
Quinton de Kock - 2020
AB De Villiers- 2010
Hashim Amla - 2008
Nathan Lyon - 1833
Dean Elgar- 1686
Shaun Marsh- 1498
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
David Warner - 1257
Steve Smith - 1227
Ravi Jadeja - 1226
George Bailey - 631

Rashid Khan - The Best Cricketer of the Week

A table topping performance from Rashid Khan was a thing of regularity during May and June where the Afghanistani spinner was there or there abouts very frequently. Since these halcyon days he has gone off the boil somewhat; losing his top spot to Simon Harmer, then letting Jeetan Patel elbow him into third position after seeing himself go seven weeks without registering a triple point weekly score. The top rated T20 bowler in the world has looked under cooked in his spell at Sussex but certainly turned the temperature up in his last two games with two three wicket hauls. One thing that has come as a surprise in this tournament is the fact that, for a spinner who prides himself on excessively low economies, his spell against Glamorgan this week has been only the second time where he has picked up maximum economy in this competition. With Daniel Vettori coming out this week and saying that the English T20 tournament, long considered a second-class competition, is the most competitive and aggressive he knows, one wonders if Rashid has been struggling to cope with the best that England can offer. Putting his struggles aside, this week has seen him narrow the gap between him and second place Patel to a mere 307. With games against Ireland on the horizon for Afghanistan, you would expect Rashid to be back in the mix over the rest of the Summer. 

Rashid and Patel are not the only two in a tussle as the Root v Kohli battle continues with frightening symmetry. Just as we have seen before, Kohli emerges as the personal Victor despite being on the losing end of the second Test - this being said, neither batsman covered themselves with glory with Root's 19 points and Kohli's 40 being the worst and the third worst performances of the week. Despite these paltry scores, the Indian can salvage bragging rights by overtaking Root (again) and reclaiming seventh spot (again). Root can take his own little glory from being the eight person to pass the 3000 point mark. There is still a lot of cricket to play for the two men however, after the last month, I will not be surprised if we see this parity continuing throughout the whole series and those mythical seventh and eighth places on the overall table still being held on to by these two young captains as we move into September. 

It has been another good week for Quinton de Kock in what has been a bad off season for South Africa. The wicket-keeper batsman has had something of a barnstorming few weeks, registering more points in the last month (633) than he did in the previous fifteen weeks (599). QDK also became the 12th South African to reach 4000 ODI runs this week as well as overtaking AB De Villiers to now be the second highest South African on our overall list. De Kock has hit the ground at just the wrong time, especially when taking into consideration Cricket South Africa's decision to withdraw him from his spell at Nottinghamshire. A spell on the sideline will see him dip in form and fall down the overall table, losing the momentum he has built up since his torrid IPL season. The quality of De Kock is in stark contrast to the rest of his team, this is best exemplified in Hashim Amla whose best score in Sri Lanka was 59 but whose average across all formats was just 18.82. Amla scored 24 points across three games this week - 10 for a catch against Sri Lanka and 14 in the CPL for Barbados. Galling for South Africa for whom he ended his most recent international spell with two ducks and his position in the overall table at a lowly 16th. Such is his poor spell of form that many are questioning his place in the team. I described 2018 as a make or break year for the 34 year old at the start of the year - and it seems we may be erring on the side of break. 

I usually compare David Warner to Steve Smith on these posts but this week I will compare the continuing torrid form of the disgraced Australian vice captain to a rising star of the T20 game. This week Jofra Archer played three T20 games and picked up 175 points, mainly for his wicket taking prowess but he also contributed an amazing 22* off 6 balls as well as making two catches. These all rounder performances are the key to rocketing up the table in the way Archer has done over the last few weeks as he sees himself in 9th place - one above Kane Williamson and one below Joe Root. Compare this to Warner whose torrid run of form seemed to be over after he scored 75 for St Lucia against Trinidad and Tobago but then followed it up with a duck against Barbados. This he added to his 11 and 7 in his two games earlier in week to see him score 140 points across 4 games - 4 games where he could really have showed his massive intent in the competition. Instead he has been a let down again - but as I have mentioned before, this rot had already set in before he tried to remove it with sand paper. It may shock you to hear that this meagre score of 140 is his best weekly score of 2018. Not his best score since his ban; the best of the year. Full stop. Exclamation mark! The main difference between Archer and Warner is that The former is keen to showcase his talents any way he can, Warner on the other hand has not contributed with any fielding displays in his five CPL games and is all too often letting his team down with his batting. I suppose that is the difference between a rising star and a damp squib. 

Week

Rashid Khan - 200
Aaron Finch - 191
Jofra Archer - 175
Quinton De Kock- 154
David Warner - 140
Steve Smith- 119
Ravi Ashwin- 97
Kane Williamson- 85
Sunil Narine- 83
Jeetan Patel - 75
Simon Harmer - 72
Jos Buttler - 64
JP Duminy- 55
Virat Kohli - 40
Hashim Amla - 24 
Joe Root - 19
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
George Bailey - dnp 
AB De Villiers- dnp 
Dean Elgar - dnp 
Ravi Jadeja- dnp 
Nathan Lyon - dnp 
Mitchell Marsh - dnp 
Shaun Marsh- dnp 

Overall

Simon Harmer - 4446
Jeetan Patel - 4126
Rashid Khan - 3819
Jos Buttler - 3478
Aaron Finch - 3248
Sunil Narine- 3131
Virat Kohli- 3049
Joe Root - 3014
Jofra Archer - 2910
Kane Williamson -2906
Shakib Al Hasan - 2582
JP Duminy - 2336
Ravi Ashwin - 2280
Quinton de Kock - 2020
AB De Villiers- 2010
Hashim Amla - 1993
Nathan Lyon - 1833
Dean Elgar- 1686
Shaun Marsh- 1498
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
Ravi Jadeja - 1226
David Warner - 1160
Steve Smith - 1084
George Bailey - 631

JP Duminy - The Best Cricketer of the Week

I feel a slight sense of anti climax after last week's record high of 2943 points to only be awarding 477 this week, however a combination of rain in England, the conclusion of the two series between Sri Lanka and South Africa and West Indies and Bangladesh as well as the fact this week falls between Tests in the England-India series means that cricket was more scarce this week. The beneficiary of this is Cricketer of the Week JP Duminy whose two wickets and 38 runs sees him top of the tree. His return to form in the last few weeks has, not only seen him back in the mix with regards to point scoring, but also made T20 captain for South Africa. This seems a strange move when, as I touched on last week, his talents lay more in the One Day arena - however his tally of 118 points, added to his 337 from last week, has seen him shoot up the overall table. This week he has overtaken Ravi Ashwin to take 12th place - if he can overcome his 2018 T20 hoodoo - we could see the South African force his way into the top ten in the coming weeks. 

I am surprised to see Kane Williamson so far down the weekly table. Unlike his other T20 Blast compatriots, Williamson's Yorkshire team has dodged the rain this week and managed to complete two games. Despite this successful moisture dodging, Williamson scored just 11 runs against Nottinghamshire and 1 in the Roses game; which was not the greatest birthday present for the 28 year old. In his three weeks at Yorkshire it has been a real case of feast or famine for the New Zealand captain. In his ten innings across the T20 Blast and the County Championship he has registered four innings over 35 but 6 innings under 11. This variable form is also seen in his weekly points tallies with him scoring 90 in his first week, 298 in his second and 22 this week. Overall his average is a fairly underwhelming 23.6 however if he shows what he is capable of in his stellar four innings (213 runs at 53.25) rather than his six rubbish ones (23 at 4.6) he could challenge those around him on the overall table. At the beginning of the IPL he, Joe Root and Virat Kohli were all at the bottom of the top ten together, whilst the other two Test captains have drawn away from him, Williamson is currently still in ninth place and has Jofra Archer in tenth and JP Duminy in twelfth chasing him closely for his berth. 

We, as cricket fans, can sometimes be quite sadistic to those that abuse the game - however we can forgive when we feel like it. For every Salman Butt and Shahid Afridi there is a Michael Atherton or Faf du Plessis who has been welcomed back into the cricketing fraternity with open arms. We are yet to decide what to do with the Sandpaper Three - however David Warner, believed to be the chief architect of that fateful day in South Africa, is continuing his time in T20 purgatory whilst we decide what we want to do with him. After his time in Canada where he scored six single figure scores out of his eight matches for Winnipeg, he has now joined up with St Lucia in the CPL where he kick started his campaign with...a single figure score. To top this off he also dropped an absolute sitter of a catch. For those who say that franchise cricket is not much of a punishment for the three cast into the wilderness, all you need do is look at the form of Warner and think again. 

Week

JP Duminy - 118
Sunil Narine - 74
Quinton de Kock - 73
Hashim Amla- 70
Jeetan Patel- 66
Simon Harmer - 45
Kane Williamson - 22
David Warner - 9 
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
Jofra Archer- dnp 
Ravi Ashwin- dnp 
George Bailey - dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
AB De Villiers- dnp 
Dean Elgar- dnp 
Ravi Jadeja - dnp 
Aaron Finch - dnp 
Rashid Khan - dnp 
Virat Kohli - dnp 
Nathan Lyon - dnp 
Mitchell Marsh - dnp 
Shaun Marsh- dnp 
Steve Smith- dnp 
Joe Root - dnp 

Overall

Simon Harmer - 4374
Jeetan Patel - 4051
Rashid Khan - 3619
Jos Buttler - 3414
Aaron Finch - 3057
Sunil Narine- 3048
Virat Kohli- 3009
Joe Root - 2995
Kane Williamson -2821
Jofra Archer - 2735
Shakib Al Hasan - 2582
JP Duminy - 2281
Ravi Ashwin - 2183
AB De Villiers- 2010
Hashim Amla - 1969
Quinton de Kock - 1866
Nathan Lyon - 1833
Dean Elgar- 1686
Shaun Marsh- 1498
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
Ravi Jadeja - 1226
David Warner - 1020
Steve Smith - 965
George Bailey - 631

Shakib Al Hasan - The Best Cricketer of the Week

They who like cricket were royally entertained last week with competitions scattered all over the globe in all format. No matter your Domestic or national allegiance there was a game which caught your fancy. The eyes of the cricketing world were inevitably drawn towards England against India - no mean feat for a format which has allegedly been dying for as long as I can remember - however it was away from this spotlight and this format that we see two returning goliaths of this game top scoring for the week. Shakib Al Hasan was the first Cricketer to score back to back Cricketer of the Week accolades before injury led to an underwhelming second quarter of the year. This week his team faced up against West Indies four times (one ODI and three T20Is). The Bangladesh captain was solid in all four games but his piece De resistance came in the second T20I where he scored 60 and bagged two wickets. Overall the player got 140 runs and three wickets but many a point was picked up for economies and strike rates to see him seal top spot for the week. Hasan is joined at the top of the weekly tree by a player who was very much in the mix in the first quarter of the year before likewise dropping away. JP Duminy's Momentum One Day Cup form for the Warriors was exquisite before a break from the game and an underwhelming IPL season saw him slide down the table. On his return to One Day cricket for South Africa he has returned to form with 177 runs to his name in the series against Sri Lanka. Out of all the names on our list it is Duminy who gets the most of his runs in the One Day format. Whilst Harmer and Patel are staples of the Long form stuff, Rashid and Buttler more for the short form and Kohli and Williamson straddling all formats, it is only Duminy who exclusively relies on One Day cricket for his star studded performances. He is the last of a dying breed. Despite the impressive performances from these two men, there has not been a huge amount of forward momentum in the overall table. Shakib remains in eleventh place with an 153 point gap up to Jofra Archer in tenth, whilst Duminy moves up two places to thirteenth. 

I find it hard to adjudicate on who has won the Root v Kohli battle this week. For pedants out there you can't help but say that Root won due to the fact that his team did. Despite this, Kohli's 270 points compared to Root's 114 coupled with Kohli overtaking the England captain again and seizing sixth place overall surely puts the Indian back in the driving seat. One thing that is for sure is that it is as tight as anything on the overall table with Kohli ahead by a mere 9 runs. With the competition between the two men very much represented in the matches themselves, it makes the next 4 Tests very interesting indeed. 

Rashid Khan and Jos Buttler are like ET and Elliot in reverse. If you remember from the tear-jerking and frankly terrifying Steven Spielberg classic , the young man and his extra-terrestrial friend were intractably linked - in this cricketing variant, whenever the Afghanistan player plays well the English player is bound to flop and vice versa. This theory posited last week has been writ large this week where the Sussex Spinner's return to form saw him get his first three figure score in eight weeks. In reply, the Englishman scored a measly one point in the first test against India. With Rashid signing an extension of his contract at Sussex, England fans up and down the land will be wishing nothing but ill will on the young Afghanistan prodigy so that the Test team can turn round their weak middle order. 

The cricketing week has been so dense that if I wrote in detail about all the remarkable performances this post would be delayed even further than it has been. Needless to say in normal weeks we would have focused on such things as:

Aaron Finch and Jofra Archer's continued dominance of the T20 Blast with bat and ball respectively
Ravi Ashwin's hatfull of wickets against England 
Kane Williamson's two man of the match performances for Yorkshire
Quinton de Kock's dramatic return to form for South Africa as he prepares to join Hampshire.

But on a week where no fewer than eight players scored over 200 points one has to be selective. One interesting thing to see is that, despite this high scoring week, the overall table has shown very little movement. At the very top of the table we've seen some incredibly large gaps between players. This allows for dramatically high scoring weeks to only make relatively small dents in the overall table. Or more correctly, it used to. Due to this big scoring week we now see the largest gap on the overall table at a mere 399 between Ravi Ashwin and JP Duminy in tenth and eleventh. Closer to the top of the table there is now just 366 points between Jeetan Patel and Rashid Khan in second and third and 357 between Buttler and Finch in fourth and fifth. These are the three biggest gaps on the overall table. We may see some rather drastic musical chairs in the coming few weeks. 

Week

Shakib Al Hasan - 350
JP Duminy- 337
Ravi Ashwin - 328
Kane Williamson - 298 
Quinton de Kock - 296
Aaron Finch - 283
Virat Kohli - 270
Jofra Archer - 202
Hashim Amla - 191
Rashid Khan - 156
Joe Root - 114
Jeetan Patel - 86
Simon Harmer - 31
Jos Buttler - 1
George Bailey - dnp 
AB De Villiers - dnp 
Dean Elgar- dnp 
Ravi Jadeja - dnp 
Nathan Lyon - dnp 
Mitchell Marsh - dnp 
Shaun Marsh - dnp 
Sunil Narine- dnp 
Steve Smith - dnp 
David Warner - dnp 

Overall

Simon Harmer - 4329
Jeetan Patel - 3985
Rashid Khan - 3619
Jos Buttler - 3414
Aaron Finch - 3057
Virat Kohli- 3009
Joe Root - 2995
Sunil Narine- 2974
Kane Williamson -2799
Jofra Archer - 2735
Shakib Al Hasan - 2582
Ravi Ashwin - 2183
JP Duminy - 2163
AB De Villiers- 2010
Hashim Amla - 1899
Nathan Lyon - 1833
Quinton de Kock - 1793
Dean Elgar- 1686
Shaun Marsh- 1498
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
Ravi Jadeja - 1226
David Warner - 1011
Steve Smith - 965
George Bailey - 631