Cricketers from India have featured rather heavily in our weekly top fives in the last few weeks however this time it is time for the English invasion. Fittingly, at the forefront of this upward surge from English players is their captain Joe Root who has returned to his home club of Yorkshire to get in good touch for the Ashes. This plan seems to be working as he scored 203 runs in the draw with Nottinghamshire. You can couple this with his traditional low economy from a few overs of awkward spin and overall he has looked impressive. Getting himself into the grind of long form cricket before the frippery of the World Cup starts will see Root able to hit the ground running on the 1st of August where he needs to start bucking the trend of being something of a big game bottler of late. Meanwhile 4153 miles away from Nottingham, Root's vice captain Jos Buttler has also been putting a shift in for Rajasthan. Despite poor form from his franchise, Buttler has shown great consistency throughout the IPL and has been regularly blowing teams away with a stunning strike rate. This week he racked up a 43 ball 89 in Rajasthan's victory over Mumbai and 10 ball 23 in their loss to Chennai. When Buttler combines high scoring with quick scoring he is a ballistic missile that destroys his adversary. Whilst Root has been giving Australia food for thought and Buttler has been marking everyone's cards for the World Cup, there is a cue of high performing Englishmen keen to show what they can do. Ben Stokes remains in the top 5 overall despite a relatively quiet week for Rajasthan, Root and Buttler are 6th and 7th and Bairstow sits 8th. You can even look at the weekly results and see that Jack Leach's performance for Somerset this week sees him finish in the top five for the week thanks to a sixfer versus Nottinghamshire that saw him double his overall score for the year. Optimistic is not a word usually associated with the English, however I feel there may be room for it despite the poor series against the West Indies.
Praise has been heaped on Rashid Khan since he made his debut for Afghanistan against Zimbabwe and he is riding high again; second only to Glenn Maxwell on points for the year. Despite this we might need to start questioning the impact the young man has on games and whether he is as effective as he once was. His main asset was his mystery spin and one of the problems with mystery spin is that once the mystery has been solved it's just spin. We have seen Rashid going from regularly bagging threefers in T20 games to that being a rare event. As ever he has appeared in almost every game Week as he travels the globe between T20 competitions and international fixtures which accounts for his high yield of points but his impact per game is diminishing startlingly. By game week 15 last year had acquired 2178 points - an average of 145.2 a week. This year he has 1499 - 99.93 a week. A deficit equivalent to two wickets, in line with his dip in scalps. What also makes this difference even more stark is the fact that this year's IPL has started earlier - so last year Rashid had picked up this higher yield without having featured for Hyderabad. In the first three weeks of IPL 2018 Rashid totalled 348 points. At the three week point this year he has a mere 185. He is still the second best player in the world - but with this trend will it remain so?
They have been waiting for a while but there is a pack of players whose bread and butter rely on their County Championship performances. This week we have seen stalwarts such as Jeetan Patel and Simon Harmer register meaningful points alongside the likes of Jack Leach and Duanne Olivier. Once you add into the mix Worcestershire's Wayne Parnell and Surrey's Morne Morkel who have not featured this week, the County Championship will really mix things up. However there is one player who has been playing a blinder all year that has seen this continue into the County grind. Last week Glenn Maxwell was in our top five for his performances for Australia, this week he is there for Lancashire against Loughborough MCCU. A different climate against a very different calibre of opponent and a different form of the game but one thing remained the same. The impact of Maxwell. 119 runs across both innings with a strike rate of 182.22 in the second coupled with a strangling economy with the ball has seen him further stretch his lead to a stunning 673. Yes it is against students but it does bode rather well. This all round all rounder really is proving to be unstoppable in 2019.
Week
Joe Root - 303
Jos Buttler - 299
Duanne Olivier- 227
Glenn Maxwell - 219
Jack Leach- 191
Shubman Gill - 140
Simon Harmer - 132
Jeetan Patel - 118
Virat Kohli - 107
Ben Stokes- 105
Abdur Razzak- 88
Rohit Sharma- 67
Kuldeep Yadav - 42
Rashid Khan - 40
Shreyas Iyer - 6
Jonny Bairstow- 1
Mohammad Abbas - dnp
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
Joe Burns - dnp
Callum Ferguson - dnp
Shai Hope - dnp
Morne Morkel- dnp
Wayne Parnell - dnp
Kane Williamson - dnp
Overall
Glenn Maxwell - 2172
Rashid Khan - 1499
Virat Kohli- 1480
Shreyas Iyer - 1475
Ben Stokes - 1444
Joe Root- 1405
Jos Buttler - 1328
Jonny Bairstow - 1289
Rohit Sharma - 1229
Shakib Al Hasan - 1191
Duanne Olivier - 1160
Kane Williamson - 1089
Kuldeep Yadav - 1002
Simon Harmer - 834
Jeetan Patel - 743
Joe Burns - 699
Abdur Razzak- 693
Callum Ferguson - 671
Shubman Gill - 535
Mohammad Abbas - 471
Shai Hope - 465
Jack Leach - 309
Wayne Parnell - 233
Morne Morkel - 113
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