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
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