Jeetan Patel - The Best Cricketer of the Week

In times gone by Jeetan Patel was a regular table topper but it seemed like those times had gone by as it has been a very long wait for the veteran New Zealander. The last time Patel was the best Cricketer of the Week was in the first week of last September where he got a tenfer for Warwickshire against Middlesex which equaled his best ever yield of wickets in a First Class innings. This week saw him equal his best ever yield for a List A match with a fivefer in his game against Nottinghamshire this week. He added to this accolade a further two wickets against Northamptonshire and 26 runs across all three of his Royal London One Day Cup games this week. This moves him into the middle of the our overall table. Not too shabby at all for a player who just four weeks ago was 17th and had half the 1268 points he now has. It is notable that the shorter the form of the game the lower Patel's scores get, so to score big in a fifty over competition will be a bonus for him and, on the return to County Championship games, I would expect to see him continue his march up the table. 

Although we have assembled an Avengers-like group of Cricketers this year - they have not been able to flex their superpowers as much as we thought in the world's premier T20 tournament. Last week we focussed on the poor form of Kane Williamson and Kuldeep Yadav. This has continued this week with Kane 'Black (Caps) Widow' Williamson registering just 8 runs in his game against Kolkata and Kuldeep 'Falcon' Yadav being erased by his franchise and left on the bench. But it is unfair to focus solely on these two players as there are many more from our list who are failing to impress in IPL2019. Cricket's Incredible Hulk, Ben Stokes, has looked decidedly more like Bruce Banner in his games for Rajasthan. He began the tournament in our overall top 5 but he has scored a mere 123 runs across his eight games, which sees him return to England with a batting average of 15.38 and his overall ranking move down to 7th. Shubman Gill is cricket's Spider-Man. A young impressionable Cricketer that has undeniable skills but needs someone to take him under their wing and mentor him if he is going to reach his potential. Those hawk-eyed cricket fans amongst us will have noticed that he has been spectacularly misfiring this season. Despite playing every single Kolkata game his average currently stands at 14.22 - and even this paltry score is buoyed up by a score of 65 against Delhi. With that score removed he would be in even more peril with an average of just 7.88. Then we come to Shakib Al Hasan. Who is he? Well you might ask. He is Adam Warlock. He is a hugely successful and popular character in times gone by in a format he feels at home in (Shakib topped our league from weeks 4 to weeks 10 thanks to his performances in the BPL). Many of his biggest fans have been expecting him to make it in the big time. However time after time he just never shows up. Shakib has been rather sidelined for Messrs. Bairstow and Williamson in terms of Hyderabad's overseas player. This week he made his return in a game against Chennai in which he seemed seemed like Mr Invisible by registering zero points. It really does seem like these players that we are so used to seeing striding majestically across our cricketing skyline are really struggling this year. I cannot imagine this will be their endgame though as, with the exception of Gill, they will all be back on our silver screens for the World Cup where they will hope to improve. 

Should you think I am being overly negative, I would like to focus on a player who has surprised me by being so consistently good in the IPL. Previously I have spoken about the quiet manner in which Delhi's Shreyas Iyer has been grinding out winning performances for his franchise. Week on week I expect him to drop out of our overall top 5. Last week he threatened to do so after only having a 62 point cushion off sixth place Jonny Bairstow. With Bairstow having another media-grabbingly positive week for Hyderabad I thought it must be time for Iyer to slope off down the table, however he has finished off by moving up to third again thanks to his combination of batting bonus points and points for fielding and strike rate. This is yet another example of the quiet man of Indian cricket going about his business inconspicuously and forcing his own little agenda. The fact that he has been overlooked for the World Cup squad means that he is due a sabbatical away from cricket for a while once the IPL is wrapped up. Surely this will be the time for him to move down - but you never know. Cricket is a funny old game - the player averages 42 in his 5 ODIs for India so a recall is likely at some point. 

Week 

Jeetan Patel - 245 
Morne Morkel - 182
Jonny Bairstow- 180
Glenn Maxwell - 162
Wayne Parnell - 152
Shreyas Iyer - 122
Rohit Sharma - 112
Simon Harmer - 91 
Abdur Razzak - 82 
Rashid Khan - 70
Jack Leach - 50
Ben Stokes - 39
Duanne Olivier - 34
Virat Kohli- 32
Shubman Gill - 27
Kane Williamson - 18 
Shakib Al Hasan - 0 

Mohammad Abbas - dnp 
Joe Burns- dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
Callum Ferguson - dnp 
Shai Hope - dnp 
Joe Root - dnp 
Kuldeep Yadav- dnp 

Overall 

Glenn Maxwell - 2736
Virat Kohli- 1710
Shreyas Iyer - 1675
Jonny Bairstow - 1671
Rashid Khan - 1659
Joe Root- 1589
Ben Stokes - 1483
Rohit Sharma - 1449
Jos Buttler - 1381
Duanne Olivier - 1344
Simon Harmer - 1271
Jeetan Patel - 1268
Shakib Al Hasan - 1191
Kane Williamson - 1116
Kuldeep Yadav - 1022
Abdur Razzak- 898
Joe Burns - 699
Callum Ferguson - 671
Shubman Gill - 596
Wayne Parnell - 531
Morne Morkel - 502
Mohammad Abbas - 471
Shai Hope - 465
Jack Leach - 359