Mohammad Abbas - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Mohammad Abbas has not had the impact in 2019 that we thought he may have had. At the start of the year he was one of the most promising bowlers in world cricket and was expected to spend a long period of time destroying frail County Championship Division 2 batting orders with his scathing deliveries. This has not come to pass. This is not solely the fault of the Pakistani bowler. He spent long periods of time inactive due to the insistence of the PCB that the bowler train alongside the Pakistan World Cup team despite the fact that they knew he was not due to be selected. There was also time wasted as he played in the ODI series against Australia and was exposed as being woefully inept at 50 over bowling. Since he joined up with Leicestershire his impact has been mixed. He has had two very good performances; one four weeks ago where he got match figures of 6/96 against Derbyshire and again this week where his 6/88 against Northamptonshire is enough to see him claim his highest score of 2019 and scrape his inaugural Best Cricketer of the Week accolade by 3 points. This sits amongst other less prestigious cricketing feats and wicketless spells. His performance this week sees him pull himself to the very top of the bottom third of players in our overall table - 68 points above Kuldeep Yadav but 290 points from Morne Morkel. This is all to play for though as another week like this one could see a further lurch up the table. Last year it was Ravi Jadeja who proved to be our late surger, could Abbas be capable of the same feat?

Shakib Al Hasan was so close to sealing Cricketer of the Week it is almost criminal. The Bangladesh captain has lit up the World Cup and is that very rare thing in international cricket: simultaneously his country's best bowler and best batter. He has taken to this World Cup as seamlessly as he did the BPL at the start of the year. In the five weeks he played for Dhaka, he scored 1129 points at an average of 225.8 a week. Easy, some people said. Playing against such green Bangladeshi bowlers and a group of second tier T20 mercenaries is nothing of note. But Shakib has brought that exact same form onto the biggest stage. Over this last five weeks he has scored 1026 at a higher average of 206.2 a week. An unbelievable achievement when you look at the quality that the veteran captain is up against. What is even more note-worthy is how he spreads his point scoring across the disciplines. This week 160 of his 231 came with the ball as he scored a fivefer against Afghanistan. Last week a staggering 235 of his 275 points came with the bat. Imagine the carnage he would cause if he could combine those two disciplines. Shakib's form has been rewarded by his return to the overall top 5 as he muscles Jonny Bairstow into sixth position. 

I can't help but notice that some of our high-flying players have had far from a high- flying World Cup Week. Second place Joe Root and fifth place Jonny Bairstow all had scores of 100 or more last week but came up against the immovable Titans of Sri Lankan cricket and hit something of a wall. Both Englishman hit something of a wall at precisely the wrong time. Root's weekly tally of 18 is his lowest active week since gameweek 10, whilst the oftentimes prolific Jonny Bairstow has not scored lower than this week's score of 37 since Week 15. This is problematic timing for the two Englishman and the team they represent. They are the team's bankers and they need to keep their currency up. On a personal level it sees Joe Root drop to third place again, having been overtaken by Jeetan Patel, whilst Jonny Bairstow drops out of the overall top five for the first time in three weeks. That time it was just a blip before he returned back the following week. England fans will be hoping for a repeat performance. At the top of the table we find a similar situation with Glenn Maxwell. His score of 33 is the lowest weekly score he has attained since March. This dents the number one player in the world's lead to 725 runs, however with him being the only player guaranteed more World Cup games after next week he has time to push on. 

Week

Mohammad Abbas - 234
Shakib Al Hasan - 231
Morne Morkel - 208
Jeetan Patel - 189 
Kane Williamson - 171
Jack Leach - 165
Ben Stokes - 149 
Simon Harmer - 125
Virat Kohli- 102
Jos Buttler - 65
Rashid Khan - 60
Kuldeep Yadav - 50
Shai Hope - 45
Jonny Bairstow- 37
Glenn Maxwell - 33
Rohit Sharma- 28
Joe Root - 18 

Joe Burns - dnp 
Callum Ferguson - dnp 
Shubman Gill - dnp 
Shreyas Iyer - dnp 
Duanne Olivier - dnp 
Wayne Parnell - dnp 
Abdur Razzak- dnp 

Overall 

Glenn Maxwell - 3741
Jeetan Patel - 3016
Joe Root- 2877
Simon Harmer - 2760
Shakib Al Hasan - 2730
Jonny Bairstow - 2558
Ben Stokes - 2493
Rashid Khan - 2455
Virat Kohli- 2380
Jos Buttler - 2229
Kane Williamson - 2220
Rohit Sharma - 2128
Shreyas Iyer - 1887
Duanne Olivier - 1852
Wayne Parnell - 1753
Shai Hope - 1739
Morne Morkel - 1710
Mohammad Abbas - 1420
Kuldeep Yadav - 1352
Callum Ferguson - 1080
Shubman Gill - 1039
Jack Leach - 944
Abdur Razzak- 898
Joe Burns - 709

Simon Harmer - The Best Cricketers of the Week

The achievement of a five wicket haul should be a relatively rare thing. An accolade that even the best bowlers strive for. For Simon Harmer these come with an unnatural ease. This week's 5/23 and 7/38 against Hampshire was his third and fourth haul of five wickets or more for Essex since the resumption of the County Championship in mid-May. In the last four games the South African spinner has accrued an incredible 32 wickets and leads the overall table for most wickets for the season - with Jeetan Patel in second. His 364 points seems him claim his fourth Cricketer of the Week accolade - just one behind Glenn Maxwell's total of 5. It also moves him back up into the overall top 5, leapfrogging fifth place and settling in fourth spot just behind Jeetan Patel. Harmer has rightfully claimed his place as the star player in an Essex side that boasts the cricketing lord, Alistair Cook, and might just be the best international signing Essex have ever had. Essex's match against table-topping Somerset starts today and, in the form he is in, there is no reason why Harmer cannot lurch up the table again. 

Do strike rates mean nothing in the modern game? I thought we lived in a T20 era where the order of the day was bat on ball and blazing stonking scores off a hand full of deliveries was De rigeur- if not De Villiers. The biggest proponent of that - Glenn Maxwell - strides majestic at the top of our overall table but this week we have seen Kane Williamson finish second boasting relatively mediocre strike rates despite two hundreds. His strike rate across his two innings was just 86.46 - relatively low by modern standard...but this was enough to see his side over the line in both instances and see him get his highest weekly score of 2019 by some distance. Incredibly Kane Williamson has still not won Cricketer of the Week despite his inclusion in our list since January 2018 - surely the highest profile player not to have finished top of the tree. The problem of low strike rates is not peculiar to just Williamson. Across the six West Indies games, Shai Hope has scored 187 runs in a tournament where he has either gone big or got out. Despite scores of 96 against Bangladesh and 68 against Australia, his average strike rate sits at just 67.75. For a West Indian player this is a statistic that almost amounts to treason. Strike rate is still a key part to the short form of the game but as Kane Williamson has proved, it is not the be all and end all. 

Does one big record breaking performance followed by a failure amount to more than two average performances? Where hugely impressive performances with the bat may stick in the consciousness a little easier, they are actually not as impactful as a player grinding out two half-centuries. One of the best individual performances of the Week came from Rohit Sharma whose 140 against Pakistan was the sixth highest score of the World Cup thus far and came in a game where the word 'pressure' doesn't even come close. Rohit's innings will live long in the memory.....but it was followed by failure against Afghanistan yesterday and subsequently The Hitman ends the week outside the top five. He is knocked into seventh position by Joe Root and Virat Kohli - two players who did not reach the dizzying heights that Rohit did but both scored half centuries at an average strike rate. This is what this point system rewards - not purely pyrotechnics but a player's impact on the game, fixture in and fixture out. This week Joe Root displaced Jeetan Patel in second place and rightfully so as he is the core player in England's side. If this dependability continued he may be able to continue his high-flying 2019 into The Ashes. 

Week

Simon Harmer - 364
Kane Williamson - 334
Shakib Al Hasan - 275
Joe Root - 235
Virat Kohli - 224
Wayne Parnell - 217
Rohit Sharma - 191
Jeetan Patel - 189 
Ben Stokes - 184
Jonny Bairstow - 140
Shai Hope - 137
Mohammad Abbas - 110
Kuldeep Yadav - 101
Callum Ferguson - 89
Glenn Maxwell - 82
Rashid Khan - 72
Jos Buttler - 32

Joe Burns - dnp 
Shubman Gill - dnp 
Shreyas Iyer - dnp 
Jack Leach- dnp 
Morne Morkel- dnp 
Duanne Olivier - dnp 
Abdur Razzak - dnp 

Overall 

Glenn Maxwell - 3708
Joe Root- 2859
Jeetan Patel - 2827
Simon Harmer - 2635
Jonny Bairstow - 2521
Shakib Al Hasan - 2499
Rashid Khan - 2395
Ben Stokes - 2344
Virat Kohli- 2278
Jos Buttler - 2164
Rohit Sharma - 2100
Kane Williamson - 2049
Shreyas Iyer - 1887
Duanne Olivier - 1852
Wayne Parnell - 1753
Shai Hope - 1694
Morne Morkel - 1502
Kuldeep Yadav - 1302
Mohammad Abbas - 1186
Callum Ferguson - 1080
Shubman Gill - 1039
Abdur Razzak- 898
Jack Leach - 779
Joe Burns - 709

Glenn Maxwell - The Best Cricketer of the Week

The headlines have been stolen by better individual performances - but for the fifth time in 2019 it is Glenn Maxwell and his explosive strike rate that finishes top of the table for the week. Whilst Messrs Warner and Finch got their centuries, Maxwell's three scores of 28, 20 and 46 all came at a strike rate of 150 or more - adding 110 points to his weekly total. This has been the story of Maxwell's year - never the player in the spotlight but quietly contributing without ever pushing on to big score. But there he sits - yet again - with his huge lead over second place. Thanks to Jeetan Patel's week off he now has swelled his lead to 988 and his prodigious run of form continues. Another facet that has led to the Maxwell dominated world we now live in, is his true all round ability. This week he gained points for everything other than his wickets - a reversal to what we saw during his spell at Lancashire where it was his bowling that propped up his totals. It is not characteristic for The Big Show to be so quietly accruing plaudits but if this goes on his lead will be as big as his nickname. 

This is not the only example of a player's contributions to the team being overshadowed by more eye-catching performances. After England's wobble against Pakistan, they have managed to steady the ship and are looking every bit the well oiled machine we have expected from them. Joe Root is getting a lot of focus on him - and rightfully so due to his two centuries and one half century from the first four games of the campaign. This week his hundred against the West Indies stole the limelight from a couple of very strong Jonny Bairstow performances. His 45 against West Indies and 51 against Bangladesh allowed England to build a confident base from which to build up on and, it could be argued, were just as important to England's progress as Root's performances. Bairstow's 196 points puts him third in the table for the week and also moves him back into the top five at the expense of Simon Harmer. With these two high-performing batsmen in the opening three for England it is clear to see how momentum is starting to build as we approach the back section of the group stages. Bigger things could come. 

Down at the other end of the weekly table we see some contributors continuing with some desperately poor form. I have written previously about how Kuldeep Yadav looks woefully out of touch. Since April his form has been on a complete nose dive. The culmination of this came this week where he contributed nothing for India's game against Australia. No wickets. A high economy. No catches. Zero. Nada. He is still comparatively well placed in the overall table thanks to his early form but is sinking like a stone. The only saving grace for the spinner is the fact that, unlike at Kolkata, he continues to be selected for India. With this faith in his ability a turnaround could happen at any given moment. Two other players who look sunk are County Championship contributors Jack Leach and Callum Ferguson. Leach's name is still (peripherally) in the frame for The Ashes - however he is enjoying a torrid time at high flying Somerset. In and out of the first team, he has accrued just nine wickets since the resumption of the County Championship. He sits second bottom on the overall table with only Joe Burns below him. Two places above Leach sits Callum Ferguson who enjoyed a decent BBL but then had a spell away from the game. On his return to Worcestershire he has been largely anonymous. Thanks to a score of 103 against Derbyshire his average stands at 30 but if you remove that century it drops to 19.57. This week he scored 1 against Lancashire. He is one of just four players yet to reach over a thousand points and will be looking to turn the tide very soon. 

Week

Glenn Maxwell - 244
Joe Root - 241
Jonny Bairstow - 196
Morne Morkel - 175 
Shakib Al Hasan - 171 
Virat Kohli - 132
Ben Stokes - 126
Jos Buttler - 124
Kane Williamson - 99
Rohit Sharma- 87 
Wayne Parnell - 75
Rashid Khan - 55
Duanne Olivier - 43
Shubman Gill - 19
Shai Hope - 11
Jack Leach - 5
Callum Ferguson - 1 
Kuldeep Yadav - 0

Mohammad Abbas - dnp 
Joe Burns - dnp 
Simon Harmer - dnp 
Shreyas Iyer - dnp 
Jeetan Patel - dnp 
Abdur Razzak - dnp 

Overall 

Glenn Maxwell - 3626
Jeetan Patel - 2638
Joe Root- 2624
Jonny Bairstow - 2381
Rashid Khan - 2323
Simon Harmer - 2271
Shakib Al Hasan - 2224
Ben Stokes - 2160
Jos Buttler - 2132
Virat Kohli- 2054
Rohit Sharma - 1909
Shreyas Iyer - 1887
Duanne Olivier - 1852
Kane Williamson - 1715
Shai Hope - 1557
Wayne Parnell - 1540
Morne Morkel - 1502
Kuldeep Yadav - 1201
Mohammad Abbas - 1076
Shubman Gill - 1039
Callum Ferguson - 991
Abdur Razzak- 898
Jack Leach - 779
Joe Burns - 709

Jeetan Patel - The Best Cricketer of the Week

If anyone thought the selection of a veteran New Zealand spinner plying their trade for a newly promoted County Championship side might have been a poor one needs to be tucking into a sizeable portion of humble pie this week. Jeetan Patel is named Cricketer of the Week for the second time this year. It also sees him score back to back scores of over 350 and improve his total to the tune of 1092 points in the last four weeks. Since the resumption of County Championship fixtures, Patel has claimed 31 wickets in four games including such notable returns as 8/36 and 4/53 against Surrey last week and 6/94 against Hampshire. This week he got match figures of 10/88 against Nottinghamshire - including a first innings 6/16. Impressive though his bowling has been, his performance against Nottinghamshire was a near perfect display from the Warwickshire man. He added to his redoubtable bowling with a 19 ball 23 to pick up rare strike rate points, got two catches in the field and got maximum economy points. He has now carved out second place as his own with a 255 point lead on third place Joe Root. He now has a week off but I expect normal service to resume when he picks up the ball again in York. 

There have been hundreds galore for our players in the World Cup this week with Rohit Sharma, Joe Root and Jos Buttler all reaching three figures - however we have seen strike rates being questioned in some of these innings. Joe Root has been accused by some of slow and selfish batting for his hundred against Pakistan - however his 104 ball 107 gives him, at 102.88, the third highest strike rate of any player from our list this week. The reasons for this criticism are two fold. Root was batting for most of his innings alongside Jos Buttler who is a different breed of Cricketer and got to his 103 off 76 balls - a strike rate of 135.52. Watching Root bat alongside Buttler makes the former look pedestrian by comparison. It is also a case of confirmation bias. England lost to Pakistan. Someone has to be to blame. Some look to the fielding. Others - more casual cricket fans - make look to the batting and fall upon Root. The same has happened with Shai Hope who got 68 off 105 in his side's loss to Australia. A strike rate of 64.76 in the modern game looks poor but Hope, like Root, was anchoring the innings after the early loss of Evin Lewis and the pyrotechnics of Chris Gayle. When watching the game live you can see that. Retrospectively it seems to suggest a poor and selfish innings. Do we accuse Rohit Sharma of that? No. His 122 against South Africa came at a strike rate of 84.72 - the third lowest strike rate of anyone in our list. But that is because India won. The same can be said for Kane Williamson's 40 off 72 balls against Bangladesh. Sure, strike rate is important in the modern game and, with the preponderance of T20 cricket, it is analysed like never before - but we need to look at each innings on it's own merit. While we are talking strike rate I feel obliged to mention the rare accolade of forty strike rate points allocated to Rashid Khan for his 27 off 11 balls against Australia - worth his return into the overall top five on that alone. 

Twelve weeks Glenn Maxwell has been number one on our overall table. In that time he has had Shakib Al Hasan, Rashid Khan, Shreyas Iyer, Virat Kohli, Jonny Bairstow and now Jeetan Patel chasing him down in second place - however until now he has not seemed fussed by any of them. After his initial tussles with Shakib Al Hasan in weeks 11 and 12, his overall lead on second place grew week on week until five weeks ago when he had an insane lead of 1910 off Rashid Khan. At that time Rashid Khan only had 1898 meaning that two Rashid Khans would not make up a single Glenn Maxwell. However from that point on, Maxwell's form has dipped considerably. His average points scored between week 13 and 19 was 245.57. His average score from week 20 to this week has been just 57. This has seen Maxwell's lead drop week on week to the point where his cushion off Jeetan Patel is now just 744. To put that into perspective, over the last fortnight Patel has scored 731. After weeks of dominance we are just two good performances from Patel away from overhauling him from his top berth. Maxwell needs to seize this World Cup by the scruff of the neck if he wants to continue to rule over everyone else 

Week

Jeetan Patel - 373
Shakib Al Hasan - 309
Morne Morkel - 252
Shubman Gill - 174
Rohit Sharma - 172
Joe Root- 167
Jos Buttler - 163
Rashid Khan - 159
Shai Hope - 128
Simon Harmer - 118
Mohammad Abbas - 80
Duanne Olivier - 71
Jonny Bairstow- 62
Jack Leach - 60
Kane Williamson - 50
Kuldeep Yadav- 40
Virat Kohli - 38
Glenn Maxwell - 34
Ben Stokes - 13

Joe Burns - dnp 
Callum Ferguson - dnp 
Shreyas Iyer - dnp 
Wayne Parnell - dnp 
Abdur Razzak- dnp 

Overall 

Glenn Maxwell - 3382
Jeetan Patel - 2638
Joe Root- 2383
Simon Harmer - 2271
Rashid Khan - 2268
Jonny Bairstow - 2185
Shakib Al Hasan - 2053
Ben Stokes - 2034
Jos Buttler - 2008
Virat Kohli- 1922
Shreyas Iyer - 1887
Rohit Sharma - 1822
Duanne Olivier - 1809
Kane Williamson - 1616
Shai Hope - 1546
Wayne Parnell - 1465
Morne Morkel - 1327
Kuldeep Yadav - 1201
Mohammad Abbas - 1076
Shubman Gill - 1020
Callum Ferguson - 990
Abdur Razzak- 898
Jack Leach - 774
Joe Burns - 709