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