Wayne Parnell - The Best Cricketer of the Week

In a week where many of the players on our list were still on rest and recuperation, another group played in two or more games. Unsurprisingly it is those players who have featured multiple times that have prospered on our weekly top 5. Wayne Parnell tops the tree after having played in a solitary County Championship Division Two fixture of the week as well as featuring in the T20 Blast, whilst Rashid Khan has played four T20 games for Sussex and Glenn Maxwell and Jeetan Patel have featured three times in the shortest form of the game. This top of the table performance for Parnell marks a return to form after a long period of inactivity. Before last week's score of 20, Parnell had not featured for three weeks. This week's score of 251 is his highest scoring week since Week 21 where he also finished as the Best Cricketer of the Week. This is proof positive that when Parnell plays, he plays well and scores big. As it stands he has been too inconsistent and still languishes at the top of our bottom third, however T20 is Parnell's favoured format so with a return to regular games in the Blast he may well push on up into a mid table pack that are very close together in terms of points. 

I will not be surprising anyone with the following statement: Jonny Bairstow is in poor form. In this week's Test against Ireland Jonny Bairstow got a pair, however his batting performances have been long since deteriorating. In his last 22 Tests he averages 27.3. In the previous 22 Tests before that he averaged 54.8. In his last 4 Tests he has scored 35 runs at an average of 5. This is torrid long term form. However if we consult our overall list of the most prolific Cricketers in world cricket we see him 6th, in front of the likes of Virat Kohli and Kane Williamson. However a large slice of these points came from his impeccable spell in the IPL - and it seems like it may be this that has thrown Bairstow off kilter. Anyone watching his unusually aggressive batting stance in his first innings against Ireland, might have been excused for thinking we might have been in over 16 of an IPL game - not a team rocking at 36-3 in a Test match. Bairstow needs to remember the discrete skills that are needed for Test match batting quick smart otherwise he could be in for a humiliating time against Messrs. Hazlewood, Cummins and Pattinson. 

Jack Leach, ladies and gentlemen. What is there to say? Leach has had a bit of a renaissance in our overall rankings of late, this being his third time in a row he has featured in the top five for the week - however nobody would have expected him to have done so off the back of his batting. There were stats aplenty about the bespectacled 'all-rounder'. Since 2017, no other England opener apart from Alastair Cook has scored as many runs in an innings at home. This is especially unusual when you look at his most recent innings. Over his last 13 innings Leach's scores were: 1*, 0, 1, 0, 5, 3*, 2*, 5, 5*, 5, 0, 9 and 6. His next score of 92 certainly does seem incongruous. His decent last 3 weeks has seen him pick up 564 points and move from 20th to 17th on the overall list. What is galling for the spinner is that it still looks unlikely that he will make the cut for the Ashes? A return to Somerset will not be a bad thing for his points, but to go from a Man of the Match performance in one Test to be dropped in the next is tough. Another player who has definitely been discarded for The Ashes is Joe Burns. After a protracted lay off due to viral fatigue, Burns returned to action with Australia A and a Graeme Hick XII to score 170 runs in three games, the large bulk of these coming from 133 for Australia A vs Sussex. The preceding scores of 19 and 18 did not please the selectors and they plumped for Wade and Bancroft over Burns. Just as with Leach, this seems harsh. Burns was Australia's top scorer with 180 in Australia's most recent Test and averages 40 in Test cricket with four centuries from 16 Tests. It is slightly less clear what the future holds for Burns. He was contracted to Lancashire before his illness so may return there, otherwise we may be seeing another period away from the game for the man who sits second bottom of our overall list for the year. 

Week

Wayne Parnell - 251
Rashid Khan - 203
Glenn Maxwell - 193
Jack Leach - 123
Jeetan Patel - 121
Shubman Gill - 109
Callum Ferguson - 106
Shreyas Iyer - 91
Joe Root- 83
Duanne Olivier - 41
Simon Harmer - 29
Joe Burns - 28
Jonny Bairstow - 10 

Mohammad Abbas - dnp 
Shakib Al Hassan - dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
Virat Kohli - dnp 
Shai Hope - dnp 
Morne Morkel - dnp 
Abdur Razzak - dnp 
Rohit Sharma - dnp 
Ben Stokes - dnp 
Kane Williamson - dnp 
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp 

Overall 

Glenn Maxwell - 4237
Jeetan Patel - 3569
Simon Harmer - 3562
Joe Root- 3174
Shakib Al Hasan - 2990
Jonny Bairstow - 2965
Ben Stokes - 2805
Rashid Khan - 2707
Rohit Sharma - 2598
Virat Kohli- 2587
Jos Buttler - 2476
Kane Williamson - 2404
Duanne Olivier - 2225
Shreyas Iyer - 2144
Morne Morkel - 2092
Wayne Parnell - 2024
Shai Hope - 1861
Jack Leach - 1683
Mohammad Abbas - 1655
Callum Ferguson - 1581
Kuldeep Yadav - 1402
Shubman Gill - 1357
Joe Burns - 928
Abdur Razzak- 898