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