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