Saturday, 1 December 2018
Nathan Lyon - The Best Cricketer of the Week (Again)
The Sheffield Shield is one of the strongest domestic leagues in the cricketing world. There are not many cricket boards who would consider letting their national stars have a run out at their home clubs as suitable preparation for the arrival of India; however Cricket Australia, in their infinite wisdom, have done so. This has worked for Nathan Lyon and Mitchell Marsh who finish first and fifth in the weekly table. It is Nathan Lyon's second consecutive week in the top spot and he is going to pose a real threat to the dodgy Indian openers. He has now bagged 16 wickets in two innings with an average economy of 3.1. His two chart topping weeks has seen the New South Welshman pick up 683 in the last fortnight and leapfrog fellow spinners Ravi Jadeja and Ravi Ashwin into 11th place. The battle between these three spinners will be a real treat for fans of that form of bowling. With the three of them all sandwiched within 356 points of each other it should make for a very interesting sideshow as the year slides to a close. Next in Lyon's sights in the overall league is fellow antipodean Kane Williamson, who he could overhaul with a successful series against India. Could Lyon finish in the top ten after all?
The United Arab Emirate's cricketing vanity project continues to roll on and it is, as ever, very hard to judge the quality of contributions in the shortest and most insignificant format. One thing we can judge is the huge variability of performances that can be pulled out of the bag by players and teams. Sunil Narine got 103 points in the first week of the performance but then brought his A game (or his A game was bought) for Bengal as he clocked up 319 this week. In his four games this week he got three scores over twenty and bagged a strike rate of forty for all of them, helping him to his highest score since February. We have always known that, when called upon, Narine can be ruthless with the bat and he has really proved that this week. It must have been a very good week for the West Indian's bank balance after news has emerged that he has been retained, for a bigger salary, by Kolkata in the IPL. Overall mission accomplished. Rashid Khan has also shown erratic form in the T10 league. He has only got six wickets to show from 6 games this week but his economies highlight the variable nature of the tournament. He started the week with an economy of 3.5 against Rajputs and ended it this afternoon with 19.5 against Bengal - stopping off at every increment of three along the way. To attend one of this games must be jolly good fun but form or talent means next to nothing in the soulless core of cricket.
There is precious little time in this year's cricketing calendar and time may be up on Hashim Amla to escape the fate of winning the notional wooden spoon. Amla will not be rock bottom of our overall league but it has been an unusual year for the bottom three in the table. George Bailey is now semi-retired and Steve Smith and David Warner....did ...something....I can't remember....it wasn't very well publicised. So if you remove those three from the equation there sits Hashim Amla whose year started mediocre and has slid into dire. In the first 21 weeks of the year the average score for the veteran South African was 72.57 a week. He ended this spell with 241 points and with a brief period away from the game. He came back in Week 28 and has since scored 24.14 a week. One of the lowest averages of any player to have played more than five weeks. In his debut season in the Mzansi Super League he has scored an average of 13.75 off the bat to continue his poor form that began for South Africa, moved with him to the CPL and may well now haunt him into 2019. With just four more posts before the names on the list switch might this be the undignified end to Amla's spell in the echelons of the very top players?
Week
Nathan Lyon - 333
Sunil Narine- 319
Virat Kohli - 245
Rashid Khan - 228
Mitchell Marsh- 136
Dean Elgar - 129
George Bailey - 121
Aaron Finch - 119
Ravi Ashwin - 115
Shaun Marsh- 111
Jos Buttler - 110
Simon Harmer - 110
Kane Williamson - 88
Jofra Archer - 80
ABDV - 70
Quinton De Kock- 61
Joe Root - 53
Ravi Jadeja- 40
Hashim Amla- 14
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
JP Duminy- dnp
Jeetan Patel - dnp
Steve Smith - dnp
David Warner - dnp
Overall
Simon Harmer - 7054
Rashid Khan - 5814
Jeetan Patel - 5311
Virat Kohli- 4618
Jos Buttler - 4534
Jofra Archer - 4383
Sunil Narine- 4362
Joe Root - 4180
Aaron Finch - 3983
Kane Williamson - 3772
Nathan Lyon - 3659
Ravi Ashwin - 3485
Ravi Jadeja - 3303
Shakib Al Hasan - 3106
Mitchell Marsh - 2799
Quinton de Kock - 2580
JP Duminy - 2496
Shaun Marsh- 2467
Dean Elgar- 2422
AB De Villiers- 2261
Hashim Amla - 2176
David Warner - 1401
Steve Smith - 1350
George Bailey - 1236
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