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
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