Rashid Khan - The Best Cricketer of the Week

It was a quiet week for the majority of the players on our list. With the exception of six players, our Cricketers were gearing up for the start of the IPL season or the County Championship warm up games. The notable exception to this was Rashid Khan. He is featuring in his inaugural IPL 2019 game for Hyderabad as I type, but rather than relaxing or conditioning he had the small matter of being an instrumental part of guiding Afghanistan to their historic first Test victory. In so doing he tops our weekly league for the first time in 2019. It has been a long wait for the Afghanistan spinner. The last time he topped our overall table was last August after a spell of strong bowling for Sussex in the T20 Blast - now he is riding high for his less favoured style of cricket. He also has found himself shooting up the table in the overall league. Last week I spoke about how Ben Stokes was likely to overtake Shakib Al Hasan for the second spot overall - instead Rashid has leapt 5 places into second. Throughout 2018, Rashid being in the top 3 was something of a regular feature and with the IPL season in front of him I don't see him getting much lower than that over the coming weeks. 

Every IPL throws up some interesting battles. Last year's tournament saw the trio of AB De Villiers, Virat Kohli and Kane Williamson in positions 7, 8 and 9. The next six weeks saw some intense jostling between these three world class batsmen to see who would come out on top. Fast forward to this year's tournament and it seems like deja vu. In seventh place at this moment in time sits Bangalore's Virat Kohli and just one point behind him sits Hyderabad's Kane Williamson. With AB De Villiers not reselected for our list this year we need a replacement for our three way tussle. Enter Rohit Sharma. He is currently in ninth place, 111 points behind Williamson, but Mumbai's captain could very well use his fierce short form ability to give his two rivals a run for their money. It really is an interesting quandary as to who will be the best this year. With Kane Williamson not starting for Hyderabad in their season opener and Bangalore being humiliated yesterday, I would not put it passed Rohit to eat into that 111 point deficit and leave his two compatriots for dust. 

It is easy to forgot our lower placed contributors in our list. We learnt this last year when Ravi Jadeja went from rock bottom of the table to pushing the top ten in a handful of weeks. With this in mind, we need to linger over Abdur Razzak. After week eight the Bangladeshi had gone pointless and was the second to last player to register a point in the competition. From there, Razzak has been quietly grinding away for his domestic team, Prime Bank, and has only failed to get a wicket in one of the eight games he has played in. This week he overtakes Shubman Gill in the overall table to pull out of the bottom three and is only a handful of points away from the likes of Mohammad Abbas and Shai Hope. This could all change over the coming weeks. The bottom three now consists of Shubman Gill, Wayne Parnell and Jack Leach. Gill is very likely to make an impact for Kolkata in the IPL and Parnell and Leach will be featuring for their counties in the University warm up games this very week. Furthermore, we must also remember that Morne Morkel has yet to register a point but is turning out for the reigning champions Surrey against the MCC at this very moment. The bottom of this table will be in a huge state of flux over the next few weeks and is just as exciting as the top of the table tussle. 

Week

Rashid Khan - 240
Abdur Razzak - 120
Joe Burns - 64
Mohammad Abbas - 40
Glenn Maxwell - 30
Virat Kohli - 6

Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
Jonny Bairstow- dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
Shubman Gill - dnp 
Simon Harmer - dnp 
Shai Hope - dnp 
Shreyas Iyer - dnp 
Jack Leach- dnp 
Duanne Olivier - dnp 
Jeetan Patel - dnp 
Joe Root - dnp 
Callum Ferguson - dnp 
Wayne Parnell - dnp 
Rohit Sharma - dnp 
Ben Stokes - dnp 
Kane Williamson - dnp 
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp 

Morne Morkel- ytp 

Overall 

Glenn Maxwell - 1435
Rashid Khan - 1314
Shakib Al Hasan - 1171
Ben Stokes - 1160
Shreyas Iyer - 1124
Joe Root- 1102
Virat Kohli- 1076
Kane Williamson - 1075
Rohit Sharma - 964
Kuldeep Yadav - 870
Jonny Bairstow - 836
Duanne Olivier - 793
Jos Buttler - 760
Joe Burns - 699
Callum Ferguson - 671
Jeetan Patel - 625
Simon Harmer - 500
Shai Hope - 465
Mohammad Abbas - 461
Abdur Razzak- 378
Shubman Gill - 340
Wayne Parnell - 148
Jack Leach - 65

Morne Morkel - ytp