Shreyas Iyer - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Even in a cricketer's wildest dreams, weeks like Shreyas Iyer's past seven days come rarely. The young Indian has managed to catapult himself up the overall table with the highest score of 2019, propel himself to his inaugural Cricketer of the Week accolade and launch himself into contention for a World Cup spot. We have seen similar bursts of form like this before. Last year, at about this time, Sunil Narine used the Regional Super50 tournament to play two or three one day games a week and cement his place in the top ten. Iyer is doing a similar thing with the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. This week he has scored a phenomenal 296 runs for Mumbai across three games in this tournament, including two centuries. This success has seen him kick start his 2019. At the start of the week, Iyer was just outside the bottom 5 for points overall - he now finds himself just outside the top 5, 30 points off Duanne Olivier. What is even more spectacular about Iyer's performances this week are his strike rates - against Sikkim he reached 147 off 55 balls and in the game versus Madhya Pradesh he got 103 off 55. With this destructive One Day form I can't help but imagine that Iyer will be able to force his way into the squad for England - and what a danger he will be!

I can't help but notice that this year's overall list sees all-rounders take the lead at the end of Week 8. Despite the fact that Shakib Al Hasan has been injured for two weeks he still reigns supreme in the top spot of our overall league. This week Ben Stokes moves into second spot and becomes the second person to pass 1000 points for the year. This week has seen Stokes performing at his Botham-like best. With a cumulative run total of 122 runs and five wickets across three 50 over games, we have seen Stokes at his emphatic best in the West Indies this week - a continuation of the fine form that he displayed towards the end of the Test series. Stokes has managed to find himself in a rhythm of particularly strong form with both bat and ball since his high profile sabbatical from the team last year. His metronomic deliveries are quite a sight to behold - unless you are on the receiving end of them. With a further three ODIs on the horizon, I can't think of any reason why Stokes will not be able to overtake Shakib as the best cricketer in the world by this time next week. 

He has been a surprise high flyer in 2019 - and still is in the top 5 Cricketers in 2019 - but I can't help but think a picture of Glenn Maxwell needs to be placed next to the adjective 'anti-climactic' in the dictionary. He appeared to be building up to something big - 61 runs against Perth contributed to his 136 points in Week 6, then 82 against the Sydney Sixers saw him register 255 last week. The stage was set for Maxwell to register his first century of the competition in the final. Instead, he got out for 1. In many ways 1is more anti-climactic than a duck - and certainly much funnier. That single run would have given the Melbourne Stars' fans something to cheer about - and then came Chris Tremain and Mackenzie Harvey to ruin everyone's fun. Maxwell won't have to wait too long to put things right as he will feature for the Australia team in their first T20 against India this afternoon. The jury is still out on how long he can remain in the top 5 Cricketers in the world - this week he slipped from second to fourth - but he will certainly be hoping to register more than the solitary point at least.

Week

Shreyas Iyer - 446
Joe Root - 362
Ben Stokes - 332
Duanne Olivier - 302
Shai Hope - 167
Jonny Bairstow- 150 
Rashid Khan - 150
Wayne Parnell - 81
Jeetan Patel - 80
Jos Buttler - 78
Shubman Gill - 23
Glenn Maxwell - 1

Mohammad Abbas - dnp 
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
Joe Burns - dnp 
Callum Ferguson - dnp 
Simon Harmer - dnp 
Virat Kohli- dnp 
Jack Leach - dnp 
Rohit Sharma- dnp 
Kane Williamson - dnp
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp 

Morne Morkel- ytp 
Abdur Razzak - ytp 

Overall 

Shakib Al Hasan - 1171
Ben Stokes - 1104
Joe Root- 977
Glenn Maxwell - 831
Duanne Olivier - 793
Shreyas Iyer - 769
Kane Williamson - 711
Rohit Sharma - 697
Rashid Khan - 582
Kuldeep Yadav - 568
Callum Ferguson - 512
Simon Harmer - 500
Jonny Bairstow - 492
Jos Buttler - 487
Virat Kohli- 444
Joe Burns - 366
Shai Hope - 354
Jeetan Patel - 297
Mohammad Abbas - 260
Shubman Gill - 168
Wayne Parnell - 133
Jack Leach - 65

Morne Morkel - ytp 
Abdur Razzak- ytp 

Glenn Maxwell - The Best Cricketer of the Week

In amongst the quagmire that is Australian cricket, the best performing player thus far in 2019 is outside the Test fraternity. Glenn Maxwell sees himself back in the top five weekly scores for the third time - this time he takes top spot. His richest vein of form couldn't have come at a better time as scores of 82 and 43 see him as the top Cricketer of the Week, take second place in our overall league and also ushers his Melbourne Stars team through to the BBL final. It has been feast or famine for Maxwell in this year's competition. Since his return from ODI duty with his national side he has played 6 BBL games. In three of these games he averaged 62 - in the other three he averaged 5. This is brought to bear in the tally of run scorers throughout the competition. Despite his name being in the headlines very regularly, he is only the 15th highest run scorer with an average of 36.66 - even Callum Ferguson, who finds himself six places below Maxwell on our overall table, has scored more runs across the competition. Undoubtably these marquee moments have helped his team to the final - but it is consistency that counts in our ranking - and one feels that Maxwell's second place berth may be short lived. 

On the balance of things, England cannot be overly disappointed that they finish Week 7 with the second, third and joint fourth best Cricketers of the Week. The fact that it came in a dead rubber at the end of a series where England's performances have been utterly underwhelming is slightly annoying. Ben Stokes has been, as ever, the diamond in the rough. After performing better than his colleagues when his team was playing poorly, he has continued to outperform as they improved. His 247 points this week is, obviously, his best score of 2019 and sees him leap up the table to claim third spot in the overall league. This is well justified - in a series where England have been inconsistent at best, he has stood out. This week Joe Root and Jos Buttler join him in the top four. They both contributed to this dead rubber victory but their positioning in the overall rankings underlines their inconsistency. Joe Root is currently 6th overall but if you remove the 237 he racked up against the West Indies President's XI, he would be a lowly thirteenth place. Thirteenth is the position that Jos Buttler finds himself in. An absolute Test revelation in 2018, weekly scores averaging 61 in the four weeks he has featured are below par. In what has been dubbed the biggest year for English cricket - there is a lot of hard work to put in. 

When comparing last year with this, another name we must consider is Kane Williamson. Williamson was underwhelming anodyne in 2018. He spent the vast majority of the year flitting around the lower end of the top ten of the overall rankings before finishing in ninth place. This year he has sprung out of the traps much brighter and has scored in triple figures in all but one of the weeks he has participated in. This sees him in fourth place of the overall league and a clear 214 points better off than this time last year. After a disappointing series against India from a team perspective, Williamson's team have started very well against Bangladesh and this comparatively easier team may feel the wrath of Williamson as he attempts to maintain his positive start to 2019. His haul of 163 points is the largest score he has registered in 2019. If we were to go back to last year he has not reached a score over 150 since the last week of November. With Tests being the favoured format of cricket for Williamson, he must be positively salivating at what he can achieve with three matches on the horizon. Kane's stickability in that top five is all but assured. 

Week

Glenn Maxwell - 255
Ben Stokes - 247
Joe Root - 197
Jos Buttler - 163
Kane Williamson - 163
Shreyas Iyer - 120
Rohit Sharma- 58
Kuldeep Yadav - 50
Jonny Bairstow- 32
Shai Hope - 15

Mohammad Abbas - dnp 
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
Joe Burns - dnp 
Callum Ferguson- dnp 
Shubman Gill - dnp 
Simon Harmer - dnp 
Rashid Khan - dnp 
Virat Kohli- dnp 
Jack Leach- dnp 
Duanne Olivier - dnp 
Jeetan Patel - dnp 
Wayne Parnell - dnp 

Morne Morkel - ytp 
Abdur Razzak - ytp 

Overall 

Shakib Al Hasan - 1171
Glenn Maxwell - 830
Ben Stokes - 772
Kane Williamson - 711
Rohit Sharma - 697
Joe Root- 615
Kuldeep Yadav - 568
Callum Ferguson - 512
Simon Harmer - 500
Duanne Olivier - 491
Virat Kohli- 444
Rashid Khan - 432
Jos Buttler - 409
Joe Burns - 366
Jonny Bairstow - 342
Shreyas Iyer - 323
Mohammad Abbas - 260
Jeetan Patel - 217
Shai Hope - 189
Shubman Gill - 145
Jack Leach - 65
Wayne Parnell - 52

Morne Morkel - ytp 
Abdur Razzak- ytp 

Joe Burns - The Best Cricketer of the Week

He was a spent force in Australian Cricket. He was well on his way to being put out to pasture. He could have easily gone the way of famous Australian discards such as Martin Love, Michael Bevan and Michael Klinger. But then two Australians got banned and changed the face of the Australian Test team, leading to a recall for Joe Burns and a classy century against Sri Lanka last weekend. This has paved his way to his debut Cricketer of the Week accolade - the first awarded to an Australian batsmen since we started in January 2018. The 229 points scored by Burns this week sees him rocket into the top ten of our overall rankings after languishing in the bottom three of active players last week. This performance was more important than sealing a victory over Sri Lanka - it also puts his name in the frame for the Ashes touring party irregardless of the inclusion of Messrs. Smith and/or Warner. In the short term, Burns will be looking forward to joining back up with Queensland for the second half of the Sheffield Shield season. From his six games thus far in the competition, he is averaging 47.20 so it is very likely he will be hovering around the top ten as the Australian summer continues. 

He has had a phenomenal BPL. Despite his Dhaka team losing the final of the BBL, Shakib Al Hasan's position as the Best Cricketer in the World in 2019 is pretty emphatic. He has a 532 point lead over second place Rohit Sharma and finds himself in a dominant position after six weeks. This time last year he was in 12th position - a placing he finally settled in after the year was out - and had 608 points - nearly half his current yield. You may think this is down to the sheer amount of games the Bangladesh captain has played. With 14 games so far in 2019, Shakib averages a strong 83.64 points per game. The aforementioned second placed Rohit Sharma averages 58.09 from his 11 games for India whilst third place Glenn Maxwell has 57.5 for his 10 games across the BBL and for Australia. We always said that, when fit, Shakib was a force to be reckoned with - and with his finger injury finally fully fixed, it seems like we are seeing Shakib at his very best. The fun does not stop here for Shakib, as next week sees the start of a tour to New Zealand. How long can Shakib stay in top spot?

Rashid Khan does seem to struggle more in the BBL than he does in other competitions. He prefers shorter and sharper bursts of cricket where he can feast on tired batsmen's aching limbs. We have seen this in the differences between his point scoring in longer competitions like the BBL and the T20 Blast compared to the complete devastation that he created in the ICC World Cup Qualifying Tournament last year. That being said, Rashid is performing way under par so far in 2019. Rashid was something of a three-fer king in 2019 but so far in 2019 he has failed to get above a brace - with his best figures for Adelaide being 2/21 against Sydney Thunder. He has achieved a brace in 4 of his ten games this year, with one wicket in another 4 and 2 games passing by wicketless. His economies are also well down on what we would expect from the Afghanistan spinner. It has been a tough year for Rashid personally, after the death of his father in mid January, however he will hope that he can return to his destructive Best as soon as possible. After six weeks he is in tenth position with 432 - at this point last year he was in 9th with 660. 

Week

Joe Burns- 229
Shakib Al Hasan - 136
Glenn Maxwell - 136
Rohit Sharma - 121
Kane Williamson - 104
Callum Ferguson - 67
Rashid Khan - 52
Jeetan Patel - 30

Mohammad Abbas - dnp 
Jonny Bairstow- dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
Simon Harmer - dnp 
Shai Hope - dnp 
Shreyas Iyer - dnp 
Virat Kohli - dnp 
Jack Leach - dnp 
Duanne Olivier - dnp 
Wayne Parnell - dnp 
Joe Root- dnp 
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp 

Morne Morkel - ytp 
Abdur Razzak- ytp 

Overall 

Shakib Al Hasan - 1171
Rohit Sharma - 639
Glenn Maxwell - 575
Kane Williamson - 548
Kuldeep Yadav - 518
Callum Ferguson - 512
Simon Harmer - 500
Duanne Olivier - 491
Virat Kohli- 444
Rashid Khan - 432
Joe Root- 418
Joe Burns - 366
Ben Stokes - 359
Jonny Bairstow - 310
Mohammad Abbas - 260
Jos Buttler - 246
Jeetan Patel - 217
Shreyas Iyer - 203
Shai Hope - 174
Shubman Gill - 145
Jack Leach - 65
Wayne Parnell - 52

Morne Morkel - ytp 
Abdur Razzak- ytp 

Ben Stokes - The Best Cricketer of the Week

The English National Team's performance against the West Indies has been unspeakably abysmal. This being said we cannot tar all players with the same brush - and Ben Stokes' performances have stood out in the two Tests that factor into this week's scoring. On the rare occasions when England had the rub of the green, it was Stokes' bowling which was the cause. In fact I would go so far to say that the team were often turning to Stokes for inspiration when the chips were down - this was especially the case in the Stuart Broad-less first Test. For a player who was brought into the Test set up for his batting, he has now become a player that can be relied on to send down over 25 overs per innings as he has done in each of the full three West Indian innings. It is lazy to say that this is Ben Stokes asking for forgiveness for his indiscretions last year, but his sacrifice for the team is laudable. The area where he does let England down is the batting he was brought into the team to do. If his 59 runs from four innings was increased by just another 50 or so we would be dealing with a player who would be exceptionally hard to ignore when it comes to exultant praise. It is, however, hard to praise a player for heroism when his team has been so badly drubbed (a conversation that we had last week about Shakib Al Hasan) but we must not throw the little ginger baby out with the particularly disgusting bath water. 

In a similar way, we do need to explore those players who are playing poorly. Some would be surprised to see Joe Root in the top five for the week and in the top ten overall. To explain this away we need to look at Root as a captain compared to Root as a batsman. When you are a captain you are asked to contribute all around the field and put yourself in the front line for everything. This is something that Root always does very well. Before his captaincy almost all of Root's Test points would have come from his success with the bat - this week 23% of his points came from fielding with 46% coming from his bowling. This does rather highlight that he only scored 40 runs in four innings in total. This is not just a blip. Over his last 6 Test innings, Root has scored 93 runs at an average of 15.5. This week also saw his average drop to below 50 for the first time in the last few years. Clearly his performance with the bat is a concern and there is only so long he can bolster this with performances from the other disciplines. With a World Cup and a home Ashes series on the horizon, Root looks dangerously exposed. 

Kohli and Williamson both have 444 at the end of Week 5 of the 2019 season. This is a pleasing little statistic, made even more pleasing by the repetitive nature of the number and the fact these two captain's have only played against each other. However it also exposes a number of things from these two players - who, lest we forget, were once bundled together alongside Root and Smith, as the Fab Four. The first thing we need to bear in mind is that due to the strenuous year ahead (and in an effort not to annoy the IPL) the BCCI has allowed Kohli to toddle off for a little nap for the remainder of the series. This means that Williamson has played one more game to get to this figure than Kohli has. A fact that is exposed by the two players batting averages - Kohli's (46.29) is almost ten more than Williamson (36.75). This shows the gulf in class between these players. It is also worth bearing in mind that Williamson is playing in home conditions and that Kohli is a tourist. Something else that we need to consider regarding Kohli is his consistency compared to Williamson. For the first two weeks, Williamson was third and then first on our overall list - he has now dropped to eighth despite playing considerably more than those around him. On the other hand Kohli has yet to grace our top five for any given week or overall in 2019. Instead he has been grinding away with very regularly impressive performances. This is exactly the same model that he adopted in 2018 - a season that saw him finish fourth overall. He is setting himself up for similar success this year. On the other hand, Williamson just scrapped into the top ten - again, a position he was used to inhabiting in 2018. Are our retained players reverting to type?

Week

Ben Stokes - 359
Shakib Al Hasan - 256
Shai Hope - 174
Jonny Bairstow - 168
Joe Root - 130
Rohit Sharma - 116
Jos Buttler - 115
Virat Kohli - 110 
Jeetan Patel - 96
Rashid Khan - 93
Kane Williamson - 78
Callum Ferguson - 64
Wayne Parnell - 52
Glenn Maxwell - 43
Kuldeep Yadav - 35
Shreyas Iyer - 23
Shubman Gill - 16

Mohammad Abbas - dnp 
Joe Burns- dnp 
Simon Harmer - dnp 
Jack Leach - dnp 
Duanne Olivier - dnp 

Morne Morkel - ytp 
Abdur Razzak- ytp 

Overall 

Shakib Al Hasan - 1035
Rohit Sharma - 518
Kuldeep Yadav - 518
Simon Harmer - 500
Duanne Olivier - 491
Callum Ferguson - 445
Virat Kohli- 444
Kane Williamson - 444
Glenn Maxwell - 439
Joe Root- 418
Ben Stokes - 359
Rashid Khan - 380
Jonny Bairstow - 310
Mohammad Abbas - 260
Jos Buttler - 246
Shreyas Iyer - 203
Jeetan Patel - 187
Shai Hope - 174
Shubman Gill - 145
Joe Burns - 137
Jack Leach - 65
Wayne Parnell - 52

Morne Morkel - ytp 
Abdur Razzak- ytp