Do you think it's possible to celebrate your individual success at the end of a week where your team has performed poorly? This is the quandary faced by Cricketer of the Week Shakib Al Hasan. Personally the player has picked up 314 points which sees him to the top of the table this week and also helps him overtake Simon Harmer into top spot for the year. From a team perspective, his Dhaka franchise have lost back to back for the first time in this year's competition, ruining their run of just a single loss in 7 games. The talented allrounder loves a spell of success at the start of the year. His Cricketer of the Week accolade in Week 4 of this year's completion mirrors where he won the corresponding week in 2018. The key to his success is the sheer amount of games he has played so early in the year, but with an earlier IPL and then the World Cup he could keep this pressure up. His seven wickets this week also helped him to be the first player in the BPL to claim 100 wickets - a continuation of players on our list performing disproportionately better in their home T20 tournament than elsewhere.
I'll hold my hands up and say that calling Kuldeep Yadav inconsistent last week was a mistake. Instead I would now like to say he is consistently inconsistent. The last three weeks has seen him go from top spot, to failing to register a point and being dropped from the team and then last week to finishing in third place and reclaiming a place in the top five overall. To add to this consistency dilemma, his two performances against New Zealand have both been consistently similar. He bowled ten overs in both games, he claimed four wickets in both games, he leaked only six runs more in the second game than he did the first. Spinners need to find themselves a bit of rhythm in order to regularly get good figures and Yadav is being allowed to find that rhythm in New Zealand. He is amazingly precocious for a 24 year old . We heap plaudits on Virat Kohli for the young age at which he breaks records, but today Yadav drew equal with Anil Kumble's record for four or more wickets in ODI internationals outside Asia - and he did it in 76 fewer games. No mean feat in an era purported to be batter friendly. He really is one to watch.
People have been pouring praise on Callum Ferguson's sumptuous 113 off 53 balls for the Sydney Thunder against Perth this week...and if we awarded points for tenacity, grit, style and flair, Ferguson would be streets ahead of Shakib. It up there with Marlon Samuels' display in 2012 and Mike Hussey's 60 off 24 as one of the finest T20 batting displays I have ever seen. The closest we do get to awarding players for their showmanship is the points allocated for Strike Rate - it is a rare treat to award 40 points but Ferguson feels like he deserves even more for his strike rate of 213. This is no flash in the pan for the Sydney captain, as he also bagged a half century off 36 balls in the previous game against the Melbourne Renegades. It seems like he has felt he can really let loose now that Jos Buttler has left for international duties. It seems fitting that Ferguson is our biggest mover on the overall table this week - leaping from 16th place last week to seventh. With another five games for the Sydney Thunder in this seemingly unending BBL, we may see Ferguson really rack up some points in this form.
Week
Shakib Al Hasan - 314
Callum Ferguson - 275
Kuldeep Yadav- 260
Shreyas Iyer - 180
Rohit Sharma - 137
Kane Williamson - 134
Virat Kohli - 98
Duanne Olivier - 70
Joe Burns - 45
Rashid Khan - 25
Glenn Maxwell - 20
Mohammad Abbas - dnp
Jonny Bairstow- dnp
Jos Buttler - dnp
Shubman Gill - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Jack Leach- dnp
Jeetan Patel - dnp
Joe Root- dnp
Ben Stokes - dnp
Shai Hope - ytp
Morne Morkel - ytp
Abdur Razzak- ytp
Wayne Parnell - ytp
Overall
Shakib Al Hasan - 779
Simon Harmer - 500
Duanne Olivier - 491
Kuldeep Yadav - 483
Rohit Sharma - 402
Glenn Maxwell - 396
Callum Ferguson - 381
Kane Williamson - 366
Virat Kohli- 334
Joe Root- 288
Rashid Khan - 287
Mohammad Abbas - 260
Shreyas Iyer - 180
Ben Stokes - 166
Jonny Bairstow - 142
Joe Burns - 137
Jos Buttler - 131
Shubman Gill - 129
Jeetan Patel - 91
Jack Leach - 65
Shai Hope - ytp
Morne Morkel - ytp
Wayne Parnell - ytp
Abdur Razzak- ytp
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