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
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