And he's back. After a nine week barren spell wherein the best cricketer in our overall league has been without the weekly accolade to go with it, Simon Harmer finds himself at the top of both trees. Finally liberated from the inconvenience of the T20 Blast, Harmer has found himself back in the long form of the game and loving life again despite his team's 50% success rate across the two games he completed this week. Reunited with Peter Siddle, the South African spinner looks very comfortable with the ball and extends his lead over Jeetan Patel to 509. Despite his high weekly score, Harmer's tally of eight wickets across two matches seems slightly underwhelming. Harmer's 464 was comprised of 255 points accrued for maidens and economies - a trait that has been seen all over the country on these late Summer pitches. Harmer's 54% of points to maidens and economies is similar to the 56% of Ravi Ashwin's total of 196 and Jofra Archer's 30% of 309. The overcast conditions and moisture has enabled the bowlers to exploit the conditions and strangle their opposition. Despite the temperatures being considerably higher, overhead conditions have also helped Sunil Narine return to his stifling economies not seen since the IPL. In a very real way all of the top three can thank clouds for their performances, perhaps I should name weather as Cricketer of the Week.
And I think we can finally put to bed the Root v Kohli debate. Kohli has won. The two captains are now separated by 308 points and five places on the overall table. Despite this I was hit this week with a revelation - perhaps we have been looking at the wrong battle. Maybe instead of comparing captain to captain, we should have been comparing captain Kohli to vice-captain Buttler. Throughout the series these two players are the ones that have had more parity between them. This week Kohli doubled Root's weekly score but just 14 points separated Kohli from Buttler. This pattern has continued throughout the Test series. After the third test Kohli scored 260, Buttler 235 and Root? 59. Just like the end of The Usual Suspects, we have been looking at the wrong person the whole time. Kohli is still the king of the crop but Buttler would have pushed him harder than Root ever could have done.
Nine points doesn't seem anything to write home about but Mitchell Marsh's 9 for Australia A against India A were his first points for 21 weeks - by far the longest period away from the game of any of the players in our list. The nine points are slightly disingenuous. Still returning from injury, the Australia A captain was not permitted to bowl and it would be no surprise that he was out of form after such a long period away from the game - especially on difficult Indian pitches. Needless to say the Western Australian will just be happy to be back on a pitch. Just as we have shifted the focus from Root to Buttler, we may have to do a similar thing with Steve Smith. Due to Smith's withdrawal from the CPL, the competition between him and Warner will have to be resumed another time. The gap between Warner and Marsh is now far more interesting. With Warner still involved in the CPL and Marsh with games left in the A-series the 33 point gap could go either way.
Week
Simon Harmer - 464
Jofra Archer- 309
Ravi Ashwin - 196
Virat Kohli - 144
Jos Buttler - 130
Dean Elgar- 115
Kane Williamson- 109
Sunil Narine - 108
Hashim Amla - 78
Joe Root - 72
Jeetan Patel-68
David Warner - 52
Mitchell Marsh- 9
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
Quinton De Kock- dnp
AB de Villiers - dnp
JP Duminy- dnp
Ravi Jadeja - dnp
Rashid Khan - dnp
Aaron Finch- dnp
Nathan Lyon - dnp
Shaun Marsh - dnp
Overall
Simon Harmer - 5163
Jeetan Patel - 4659
Rashid Khan - 4330
Jofra Archer - 3822
Jos Buttler - 3843
Virat Kohli- 3453
Aaron Finch - 3343
Sunil Narine- 3252
Kane Williamson - 3203
Joe Root - 3145
Shakib Al Hasan - 2582
Ravi Ashwin - 2581
JP Duminy - 2336
Hashim Amla - 2091
Quinton de Kock - 2020
AB De Villiers- 2010
Nathan Lyon - 1833
Dean Elgar- 1809
Shaun Marsh- 1498
Mitchell Marsh - 1434
David Warner - 1401
Steve Smith - 1350
Ravi Jadeja - 1226
George Bailey - 631
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