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