Nathan Lyon - The Best Cricketer of the Week

All through the year Nathan Lyon has proved himself as capable of producing incredibly destructive performances; his sixth Cricketer of the Week accolade is testament to this. These massive scores have been needed for a player who has been inactive for as long as he has throughout the year. The average number of inactive weeks in 2018 for the top ten players in our overall list is 18 - Jofra Archer has most with 23 and Rashid Khan has least with 12. Nathan Lyon, who sits just outside the top ten, has had 30! What sets Lyon apart from the rest is that when he does play he registers big! His average points scored per week is 202 which puts him second only to league leader Simon Harmer's 229. His eight wickets against India in the first test are even more highly prized due to the fact that they are against players who are supposedly the best players of spin in the world. The player termed the Greatest of All Time is making his claim to be one of the most under rated players on our overall list. 

However there is a caveat to all this. It is has been a bowlers week with the top four all being wicket takers. With 151 points separating Lyon from fifth place AB De Villiers and 69 from the South African batsman to fourth place, we can, yet again, see that bowlers have the edge in this game. Despite this, as George Orwell might have said, not all bowlers are created equal. So what has made the difference? Predictably it is maidens bowled. Between them the top three bowlers scored 205 points from maiden overs. Ravi Ashwin bagged the most with 110, then Jeetan Patel with 50 and Nathan Lyon trailing behind with 45. Compare this to Shakib Al Hasan in fourth who scored the grand total of 0 maidens in his three ODIs and you can see why the Bangladesh captain might have been trailing. In three posts time, maidens will not be worth the five points that they have this year so the frugal trio at the top of the tree need to enjoy these luxuries while they last. 

These last few weeks I have been commenting on the lack of success for Hashim Amla. This has continued this week as Dean Elgar (129), Shaun Marsh (82) and AB De Villiers (226) have all scored well to draw away from the languishing Proteas batsman but it is the figure that they have all overtaken that has caught my eye this week. Now sat in 20th place is JP Duminy. His fall from grace has been worthy of Satan himself. Whilst most other players have enjoyed some jostling up and down the table throughout the year, Duminy has proved the Henry Jekyll of our list in as much as his "movement was thus wholly towards the worse." Between Weeks 2 and 6 JP Duminy rode majestic over our league in top spot, before spending five weeks in second and a further two weeks in third. From there he has continued to decline, dropping out of the top ten in Week 21 and now inactive for the last nine weeks. With the exception of seventh and eleventh place, Duminy has now positioned in every ranking between 1st and 20th. With him now taking up a commentary role as part of the broadcast team for the Mzansi Super League, potentially 2019 will see him focus more on his career after cricket than on the pitch. 

Week

Nathan Lyon - 377
Ravi Ashwin - 360 
Jeetan Patel - 296
Shakib Al Hasan - 295
AB De Villiers- 226
Quinton De Kock-136
Dean Elgar - 129
Mitchell Marsh- 107
Shaun Marsh- 82
Rashid Khan - 81
Aaron Finch- 61
Virat Kohli- 47
Simon Harmer - 30
Hashim Amla - 26
Jofra Archer- dnp 
George Bailey - dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
JP Duminy- dnp 
Ravi Jadeja- dnp 
Sunil Narine- dnp 
Joe Root- dnp 
Steve Smith - dnp 
David Warner - dnp 
Kane Williamson - dnp 

Overall

Simon Harmer - 8229
Rashid Khan - 6025
Jeetan Patel - 5607
Virat Kohli- 4665
Jos Buttler - 4534
Jofra Archer - 4383
Sunil Narine- 4377
Joe Root - 4180
Kane Williamson - 4060
Aaron Finch - 4044
Nathan Lyon - 4036
Ravi Ashwin - 3845
Shakib Al Hasan - 3405
Ravi Jadeja - 3303
Quinton de Kock - 3076
Mitchell Marsh - 2906
Dean Elgar- 2614
Shaun Marsh- 2549
AB De Villiers- 2542
JP Duminy - 2496
Hashim Amla - 2202
David Warner - 1401
Steve Smith - 1350
George Bailey - 1236