Monday, 5 November 2018

Shaun Marsh - The Best Cricketer of the Week



What can you say about Shaun Marsh? After being discarded by Australia - a busted flush after a dire series against Pakistan - he dejectedly returns to Western Australia a broken man .....and scores 178 runs against Tasmania. Great joy and jubilation. The saviour of Australian cricket has returned. South Africa are in town. Call him back up. Let him lead Australia to their new elite future. However wait....no.....he has an abscess in his buttock and needs to withdraw from the squad for surgery. Such is the career trajectory of just one week in the life of Shaun Edward Marsh. Such twists and turns are more likely seen in a Hollywood blockbuster rather than the fields of Perth. With characteristic peculiarity he finds himself back atop the weekly poll as top Cricketer of the Week despite the last few dire showings in the league. The Rocky Balboa of cricket seems unable to hold down his destined place in the international side much to his and his supporters frustrations - this is despite the fact that when he returns to domestic stuff he tears the place apart. In this regard George Bailey is the ying to Marsh's yang. Having averaged 6.2 across his last five innings for Tasmania, the veteran Aussie returned to a (sort of) international team as he captained the Prime Minister's XI against South Africa and impressed many with his score of 51*. So quiet has Bailey's year been that many had forgotten the Tasmanian's unusual stance which led to something of a Twitter frenzy around the old-timer. His 99 points this week (10% of his overall score for the year) sees him break 1000 points in the competition and is now just a mere 5507 away from Simon Harmer. I still believe, George. 

Cast your minds back to when you were young and you may remember a cricket team by the name of New Zealand....and their captain was this bloke called Kane Williamson who has had to rely on Hyderabad and Yorkshire to pick up his points this year. This week, however, New Zealand decided to dust off the old cricket equipment that they had found at the back of their shed and have a good old nostalgic T20 series against Pakistan in the UAE. Just for old times sake. These three T20 matches has seen Williamson look somewhat rusty after a break away from the game but his combined score of 219 across the three games sees him finish third on our weekly table and register his highest score in 13 weeks. His overall position on the table is still pretty consistent with where he was at the start of the IPL season - just clinging on to the top ten. This will change though as Messrs Ashwin, Al Hassan and Lyon are narrowing the gap between the top ten and the chasing pack. Maybe Williamson is returning to international action just in time. 

A while ago I referred to Quinton De Kock as Mr Consistent. A player who, whilst not playing as regularly as he would like, will always deliver when asked. I proved this by highlighting the amount of times he registers three figure point scores for the week. Well, he has done it again this week with 107 across his two games in Australia to continue a slow gentle plod of a year. It has been a disappointing year for the majority of the South Africans on our list (with one notable exception) which sees them all bunched together on the overall table with JP Duminy at the top in 15th and AB De Villiers at the bottom in twentieth. With these players in such close proximity to one another it is tempting to compare them and this week has thrown Dean Elgar up as one of the top performers thanks to a score of 128 for the Titans against the Lions. Elgar finds himself 2 places above De Kock in the overall table but with only a 14 point lead. What will be disappointing for the batsman is the fact that he has played so much more than his compatriot. Elgar's 2222 points comes from 25 active weeks (Average 88.88) whilst De Kock's 2208 comes from 21 active weeks (Average 105.14). This shows that De Kock is more reliable than Elgar. This variance is also shown in a week by week basis. Whilst both of them have a similar amount of three figure scoring weeks (QDK 11 and Elgar 10), Elgar has scored less than fifty points in an active week seven times compared to De Kock's three. In this way it is clear that Elgar is the one that is having the most inconsistent year but De Kock who has been treated poorly, first by Bangalore and now by South Africa. 

Week

Shaun Marsh-248 
Virat Kohli- 236
Kane Williamson - 219 
Ravi Jadeja - 197
Simon Harmer - 180
Joe Root- 175
Dean Elgar - 168
Ravi Ashwin - 165
Quinton De Kock- 107
George Bailey - 99
Jos Buttler - 92
Mitchell Marsh- 81
Aaron Finch- 26
Nathan Lyon - 24 
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
Hashim Amla - dnp 
Jofra Archer - dnp 
AB De Villiers- dnp 
JP Duminy- dnp 
Rashid Khan - dnp 
Sunil Narine - dnp 
Jeetan Patel - dnp 
David Warner - dnp 

Overall

Simon Harmer - 6587
Rashid Khan - 5555
Jeetan Patel - 5311
Virat Kohli- 4369
Jos Buttler - 4194
Sunil Narine- 3938
Joe Root - 3841
Aaron Finch - 3718
Jofra Archer - 3578
Kane Williamson - 3506
Ravi Ashwin - 3370
Shakib Al Hasan - 2886
Nathan Lyon - 2751
Ravi Jadeja - 2717
JP Duminy - 2496
Dean Elgar- 2222
Mitchell Marsh - 2217
Quinton de Kock - 2208
Hashim Amla - 2091
AB De Villiers- 2010
Shaun Marsh- 1904
David Warner - 1401
Steve Smith - 1350
George Bailey - 1080

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