Ben Stokes - The Best Cricketer of the Week

So last week I was a fully paid up member of the 'England are Crap at Cricket' Club. The future of English Cricket was desolate and nothing or nobody would stop it from becoming a secondary sport akin to kabaddi or slalom canoeing. Then came Ben Stokes. Beautiful Ben Stokes. One of the Best Test innings you will ever see showcased Stokes' ability to switch up through the gears in a performance that started in stoic defence and ended like a T20. Stokes was not the hero that England fans deserved but he was the hero they needed. Last week, we discussed the moveable feast that was fifth place in the overall table and speculated as to who would take on the mantle next. One scenario that I didn't envisage was someone shifting up to fourth; however Super Stokes' superb showing sees him knock Joe Root - who didn't have a bad week himself - off his fourth position Perth and break up the top 4 love-in of Glenn Maxwell, Simon Harmer, Jeetan Patel and Root for the first time in seven weeks. Ben Stokes' growing potential as a genuine all rounder will help his overall performance in a top ten that has seen the likes of Maxwell and Shakib Al Hasan both score prolifically. Long live King Ben as this Ashes series progresses. 

Stokes was one of just three players that moved up the overall table this week but was certainly one that did so off just one match. Away from the media glare and further towards the bottom of our overall table, Shubman Gill had another good week. After a fairly quiet IPL and his lack of selection by India, Gill has shown flashes of inspiration which has helped him move towards mid table. At the mid point of the year, Gill seemed a fairly certain candidate to finish near the foot of the table, however over the last seven weeks he has finished in the weekly top five four times and accrued 743 points. This has seen him move from third bottom overall to a slightly more respectable sixth bottom. He overleaped inactive Callum Ferguson and Mohammad Abbas this week to put him 230 points above the bottom three. It could be a season in the sun for the young Indian as he represents his nation's A team against South Africa A in a series of five ODIs over the course of the next two weeks. This could be make or break for the youngster. If he does well there, he will edge his way up the table and force the selectors into selecting him for a full representative ODI. Alternatively he could underwhelm, stay in the bottom third of the table and continue to have another year where he was the understudy rather than being in the main show. 

That fifth position merry go round is not the only hotly contested spot on our table. Second and third is equally as fought over, however the difference is that it is just being passed back and forth between spin twins Simon Harmer and Jeetan Patel. This week Harmer takes second place from Patel again - the sixth time in the last eight weeks where the two have switched positions. These two have been cemented together since the back end of 2018. Last year they both finished in first and second spot and this year they seem likely to be riding tandem throughout the year again. This being said, there is one crucial difference that may give one of them the edge in coming weeks. Patel's Warwickshire side have been eliminated from the T20 Blast, whilst Harmer's Essex March on. If Essex can make it to Finals Day that may well be a further three games that the South African has over his New Zealand counterpart - however if Lancashire see off Essex it could just be a mere one game. Even in the circumstance that Harmer does play a further three games, due to T20 not being his favoured form of the game, he may well just pick up a couple of hundred points and ,with the current lead a mere 31, that means it still is very much all to play for in the battle of the spinners. 

Week

Ben Stokes - 323
Glenn Maxwell - 229
Simon Harmer - 137
Joe Root - 117
Shubman Gill - 105
Jonny Bairstow- 100 
Shai Hope - 86
Jeetan Patel - 80
Virat Kohli - 90
Jack Leach - 42 
Kane Williamson - 40
Jos Buttler - 6
Wayne Parnell - 1

Mohammad Abbas - dnp 
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
Joe Burns - dnp 
Callum Ferguson- dnp 
Shreyas Iyer - dnp 
Rashid Khan - dnp 
Morne Morkel- dnp 
Duanne Olivier- dnp 
Abdur Razzak - dnp 
Rohit Sharma - dnp 
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp 

Overall 

Glenn Maxwell - 4858
Simon Harmer - 3936
Jeetan Patel - 3905
Ben Stokes - 3532
Joe Root- 3450
Jonny Bairstow - 3271
Virat Kohli- 3227
Shakib Al Hasan - 2990
Rohit Sharma - 2853
Rashid Khan - 2835
Wayne Parnell - 2619
Jos Buttler - 2571
Duanne Olivier - 2534
Kane Williamson - 2498
Shreyas Iyer - 2370
Morne Morkel - 2172
Shai Hope - 1976
Jack Leach - 1891
Shubman Gill - 1792
Callum Ferguson - 1790
Mohammad Abbas - 1705
Kuldeep Yadav - 1562
Joe Burns - 928
Abdur Razzak- 898

Duanne Olivier - The Best Cricketer of the Week

I must have some kind of special power that I was not aware of. The number of times I have highlighted a player's lack of form one Week only for them to blow everyone out of the water the very next week is quite phenomenal. Three weeks ago it was Shubman Gill. This week it was Duanne Olivier. After writing him off as an embarrassment to Yorkshire and bowlers all around the world, he re-entered the County Championship fray and bagged six wickets coupled with maximum economy points to finish as the Best Cricketer of the Week for the second time - after being our inaugural pick at the start of the year when he was playing against Pakistan for South Africa. The return to longer form cricket has clearly appealed to Olivier and a number of our County Championship bowlers would have been salivating at the chance to do some damage with the red ball however, Olivier aside, the bowlers that we expect prolific yields from have disappointed. If you remove Olivier's six wickets, the next highest wicket taker from our list is another surprise, in the form of fellow Kolpak player Wayne Parnell. More used as a T20 bowler, Parnell seized three wickets against Northamptonshire, forced his way into third place for the week and overtook Jos Buttler to move into 11th position. Apart from those two South Africans, the pickings were slim. Our perennial high fliers, Jeetan Patel and Simon Harmer, got 2 and 0 wickets respectively whilst Morne Morkel and Mohammad Abbas both disappointed with 1 wicket. In a week where Sam Billings offered a fairly robust criticism of County Championship scheduling, citing the expectation that a player can move from one form to another seamlessly, it seems that our red ball specialists are struggling to return to their favoured format. 

Some summaries of last week's best Cricketers age rather better than others. There can be times when you are writing about a game that happened a full week ago and you can be aware of an ongoing game which has drastically changed a player or a team's outlook. This is very much the case with England this week. As I write, England are in the middle of a desperately disappointing Test which has seen them capitulate The Ashes series to our cousins on the underside of the world. Newspapers, the media and Twitter have been moribund regarding the team's performances. However cricket is a game that can turn on it's head in an instant and at the end of the second Test things were looking a little brighter. This can be seen in the weekly totals whereby three English players make up the top six. It seems fairly galling to say that now but their achievements need to be memorialised in the same way as someone who had a very good plan to escape the eruption of Pompeii was memorialised by the preservative effects of the lava. The best preserved corpse of an England player is Ben Stokes who finishes in second position this week and becomes the latest player to take the overall fifth spot. This position has been passed around like herpes at a festival. Stokes was in possession of fifth place for two weeks in April but since then Shreyas Iyer, Jeetan Patel, Joe Root, Virat Kohli, Simon Harmer (1 week), Rashid Khan (3 week), Jonny Bairstow and Shakib Al Hasan (5 weeks). Whereas the top 4 have remained comparatively stable it really is 5th place that we are seeing the most movement. With Ben Stokes having a mere 38 point lead off Bairstow and 72 points off Kohli, my expectations are that further shifting and sorting is going to occur. 

And let's finish on a contentious issue. Our overall list, by and large, represents the form of the Cricketers over the calendar year but another poor score for Kane Williamson this week has seen the New Zealand captain sink to his lowest position of 14th. This is a man who got his team to a World Cup final and is one of the premier batsmen of his generation however he has never ever won the Cricketer of the Week award and finished in 9th place overall last year. So why is Williamson always the bridesmaid and never the bride. There are many potential examples for the disappointing yield for the Kiwi. One is the fact that New Zealand just do not play the same amount of international fixtures as other nations. Kohli and Smith - both riding high in fourth and seventh - are never more than a handful of weeks away from their next international foray. In 2018, Williamson barely featured for New Zealand and instead had to rely on Hyderabad and Yorkshire for his points. Another potential reason is the strike rate of his batting. Williamson is very much made in the traditional mould of batsmen and wouldn't have looked out of place in a Test side of yesteryear. He will very rarely get above 60 in terms of his strike rate in Tests and will also be the calm methodical anchor in most ODIs - something we saw reflected in his World Cup performances this year. This means he will be turning down somewhere between 10 and 30 points in a two thirds of his games. When you are already disadvantaged by the number of games you are playing it all all adds up. Without a shadow of a doubt Williamson is a legend of the New Zealand cricket, but does not appear to be a legend of our game. 

Week

Duanne Olivier - 228
Ben Stokes - 198 
Wayne Parnell - 167
Jack Leach - 166
Simon Harmer - 145
Jonny Bairstow - 142
Jeetan Patel - 123
Kuldeep Yadav - 110
Rohit Sharma - 88
Morne Morkel - 70
Jos Buttler - 63
Glenn Maxwell - 51
Mohammad Abbas - 50
Kane Williamson - 44
Joe Root - 24
Callum Ferguson - 11
Shubman Gill - 6

Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
Joe Burns - dnp 
Shai Hope - dnp 
Shreyas Iyer - dnp 
Rashid Khan - dnp 
Virat Kohli - dnp 
Abdur Razzak - dnp 

Overall 

Glenn Maxwell - 4629
Jeetan Patel - 3825
Simon Harmer - 3799
Joe Root- 3333
Ben Stokes - 3209
Jonny Bairstow - 3171
Virat Kohli- 3137
Shakib Al Hasan - 2990
Rohit Sharma - 2853
Rashid Khan - 2835
Wayne Parnell - 2618
Jos Buttler - 2565
Duanne Olivier - 2534
Kane Williamson - 2458
Shreyas Iyer - 2370
Morne Morkel - 2172
Shai Hope - 1890
Jack Leach - 1849
Callum Ferguson - 1790
Mohammad Abbas - 1705
Shubman Gill - 1687
Kuldeep Yadav - 1562
Joe Burns - 928
Abdur Razzak- 898

Virat Kohli - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Nobody wants to face off against Virat Kohli when he is in red hot form - but if you are West Indian there must be a fresh kind of terror that bubbles up from your core when you see the imp faced batsman in his crease. Last week I pointed out that Kohli's return to our weekly top five may presage big things to come and it did - in fact it presaged his second Cricketer of the Week accolade. This is still much lower than you would have expected the world class batsman to have attained by this point of the year - however it does catapult him into the overall top five for the first time in many a moon. Kohli has been in rich form since the World Cup - which must be a bitter pill to swallow for any Indian fans. His 550 points in his three active weeks since the World Cup is impressive when you consider that he only scored 220 more in the whole of the six week tournament. This being said, Kohli has form of exploiting the West Indian bowlers. His yield of 374 points is his highest weekly points since late October last year when he got 417 for getting two centuries against the West Indies - just as he did this week. With his old rival, Joe Root struggling in The Ashes at the moment, it is not inconceivable that Kohli may force his way further up the table with the two Tests on the horizon. 

Kohli is yet another Indian player to feature in our top 5 over the last two weeks. Last week Shubman Gill, Kohli and Rohit Sharma were all in the top five, whereas this week Kohli is joined by Shreyas Iyer and perennial disappointment Kuldeep Yadav taking advantage of a low scoring week to finish in sixth overall. It seems we are experiencing something of an Indian summer. With five internationals in our list, India is joint first with England in terms of representation but unlike England there is much more of a spread across the overall table. India have two players in the top ten; Kohli in fifth and Sharma in tenth, whereas England have Joe Root (3rd), Jonny Baristow (6th) and Ben Stokes (7th). These five are all fine players and deserve their spot in the top ten. Jos Buttler is still a surprise to be outside the top ten and languishes in eleventh. Behind that main core of internationals there are three players - three Indian and one English - that make up the full compliment. For India, Shreyas Iyer is definitely one for the future. After a very successful Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy and a relatively average IPL, Iyer was left out of the Indian World Cup side which saw his positions on the overall table drop. He is now dead in the middle of the table and has not been selected for the Indian Test sides so will be away from the game for a while - such inconsistency of selection has held the young man back this year. Further down the pack is Shubman Gill. A spectacular performance last week for India A boosted his total but he is still way behind the pack. Lastly comes Kuldeep Yadav in 21st place. A hugely disappointing year in the shorter format for both Kolkata and India has seen him fall behind the pace in a drastic fashion. A return to Tests may well see him pick up more points but if the ship hasn't already sailed it's certainly leaving the dock. So for India that makes two core world class players and three peripheral ones. The only outlier for England, other than the phenomena of Jos Buttler, is Jack Leach. A player who has impressed far more for England than he has for Somerset this year, Leach is in 19th place overall but may well be moving up if he becomes a regular member of the England set up. So what does all this tell us? Well, India are very reliant on two world class players who bat at the top of the order whereas England have more reliable players throughout the order. Another finding could be that in Iyer and Gill, India have a stronger second bank of players that they can call on if needs be. In a year where head to heads between England and India are limited, this is the only way we can match up the two squads currently and I think England just about have the edge. 

On the domestic front, the T20 Blast rumbles on dodging the rain where it can and my eye was drawn to two performers whose lack of performance has been eye-catching throughout the year. One I have mentioned a lot is Rashid Khan. I will not go into all the details as to Rashid's poor year or my prognosis that he has been found out but the fact that he registered a 0 point game for Sussex against Surrey is a further sign of the young man's decline. He is back down to ninth in our overall table and has Rohit Sharma breathing down his neck. Another bowler who has been underwhelming in all formats this year has been high profile Yorkshire acquisition, Duanne Olivier. His yield of a solitary point this year made him an eye-catching talking point but his position in 15th position and sliding downwards will be troubling for him. His figures this week against Derbyshire were a shocking 3-0-47-0, an economy of 15.66! In all formats this year, Olivier has been averaging one wicket an innings - which is not what a world class 'international' bowler should be boasting in a domestic sphere. There are a myriad of names that we can compare Olivier to in our list. High-flying Simon Harmer and Jeetan Patel are 1348 and 1396 points above him respectively. A better comparison would be Morne Morkel who despite the fact he does not play T20 Blast or the One Day Cup and has subsequently been inactive four weeks more than Olivier only trails his South African compatriot by 204 runs. It has been a poor year for Olivier so far and one wonders whether he, Yorkshire or both of them regret the decision they made at the start of the year. 

Week

Virat Kohli - 374
Shreyas Iyer - 226
Glenn Maxwell - 139
Callum Ferguson - 95
Wayne Parnell - 76
Kuldeep Yadav - 50
Jeetan Patel - 40 
Shai Hope - 29 
Rohit Sharma- 28 
Morne Morkel - 10 
Duanne Olivier - 1 
Rashid Khan - 0 

Mohammad Abbas - dnp 
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
Jonny Bairstow - dnp 
Joe Burns- dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
Shubman Gill - dnp 
Simon Harmer - dnp 
Jack Leach- dnp 
Abdur Razzak - dnp 
Joe Root - dnp 
Ben Stokes - dnp 
Kane Williamson - dnp 

Overall 

Glenn Maxwell - 4578
Jeetan Patel - 3702
Simon Harmer - 3654
Joe Root- 3309
Virat Kohli- 3137
Jonny Bairstow - 3029
Ben Stokes - 3011
Shakib Al Hasan - 2990
Rashid Khan - 2835
Rohit Sharma - 2765
Jos Buttler - 2502
Wayne Parnell - 2451
Kane Williamson - 2414
Shreyas Iyer - 2370
Duanne Olivier - 2306
Morne Morkel - 2102
Shai Hope - 1890
Callum Ferguson - 1779
Jack Leach - 1683
Shubman Gill - 1681
Mohammad Abbas - 1655
Kuldeep Yadav - 1452
Joe Burns - 928
Abdur Razzak- 898

Shubman Gill - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Writing last week I said that the bottom four contributors on our overall list, led by Shubman Gill, would have to do something special in order to stop their slow drift away from the main pack. This week Shubman Gill became the youngest Indian player to score a double century as he reached 201* for India A in their third Test against West Indies A. This has seen the young Indian batsman claim his first Cricketer of the Week accolade - the eighteenth player on our list of twenty four to have won the award at least once in 2019. There can't have been many Test double hundreds that were scored at a strike rate of over 80 but Gill also managed to bolster his score for the week by picking up 10 points for a strike rate of 82.25. He has also dramatically pulled away from third from bottom placed Kuldeep Yadav and made a true bottom three that have 253 points to make up in order to join the rest of the pack. Gill is now cheek by jowl with Callum Ferguson and Jack Leach who all have just four points between them - however Ferguson has the T20 Blast and Leach has just been called back up to The Ashes squad. In comparison this could be the high point for Gill for some time. 

Virat Kohli, the foremost talent in world cricket, is in our weekly top five this week. No big deal, huh? Well actually it is. This has been rarer than you would have thought this year. The last time this happened was at the end of June. Before that it was the start of April. Before that you have to go back to the start of March. In this time both Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer have featured in the weekly top five more times than Kohli has. The below average year for the Indian captain has been well publicised. Last week we calculated that he was 319 points down on this point last year - so his 147 points thanks to 87 runs from two T20 matches against West Indies will be gratefully received. He has also moved from tenth position into ninth - over-taking his colleague and (if some people are to be believed) rival Rohit Sharma. Kohli is undoubtably a class act and he should be looking up the table and not down. Above him is an upwardly mobile Rashid Khan but just 227 points above him in seventh place is Shakib Al Hasan. The Bangladesh stalwart is taking a well earned break after his World Cup exertions and those around him are taking advantage. This week both Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes have overtaken him, forcing him out of the top five for the first time in five weeks. With the places between fifth and eight in flux, Kohli could take advantage and hit the top five if he impresses against West Indies, a team he has historically done well against. 

That first Ashes Test was a weird one in terms of points. England fans will be disappointed with the manner of their defeat but many contributions were decent. Two Englishman finish in the top five for the week. Ben Stokes finishes second and puts himself just outside the top five overall whilst Joe Root finishes fourth. Even the disappointing Jonny Bairstow manages to squeeze his way into the top five and Jack Leach is promised further points in the second Test thanks to his call up at the expense of Moeen Ali. The only player who has nothing good going for them is Jos Buttler. The sometime wicket keeper and explosive batsman was neither of those things in the first Test and got a mere 26 points. He languishes well off the pace in the overall list too, as he is just outside the top ten. Buttler will for ever be seared on England fans' memories due to his World Cup exploits but, aside from the final, his contribution over the World Cup was minimal. When we did our calculations at the end of the World Cup he was the third least prolific points scorer behind Rashid and Glenn Maxwell. It seems like this trend is continuing. Between the first day of the World Cup and today, Jos Buttler has scored 695 points, this is the lowest of anyone in the top 13. In that time Simon Harmer has put on 1891 points with Jeetan Patel gaining 1755 and Joe Root adding 1343. If Buttler has aspirations of breaking into that top ten he needs to be outscoring them more regularly. Something he has not been doing for the last twelve weeks. 

Week

Shubman Gill - 264
Ben Stokes- 206 
Virat Kohli - 147
Joe Root - 135
Rohit Sharma - 105
Wayne Parnell - 100
Jeetan Patel - 88
Rashid Khan - 71 
Jonny Bairstow - 64
Duanne Olivier - 40
Callum Ferguson - 33 
Jos Buttler - 26
Simon Harmer - 12
Kane Williamson - 10

Mohammad Abbas - dnp 
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
Joe Burns- dnp 
Shai Hope - dnp 
Shreyas Iyer - dnp 
Jack Leach- dnp 
Glenn Maxwell - dnp 
Morne Morkel- dnp 
Abdur Razzak - dnp 
Kuldeep Yadav- dnp 

Overall 

Glenn Maxwell - 4439
Jeetan Patel - 3662
Simon Harmer - 3654
Joe Root- 3309
Jonny Bairstow - 3029
Ben Stokes - 3011
Shakib Al Hasan - 2990
Rashid Khan - 2835
Virat Kohli- 2763
Rohit Sharma - 2737
Jos Buttler - 2502
Kane Williamson - 2414
Wayne Parnell - 2325
Duanne Olivier - 2305
Shreyas Iyer - 2144
Morne Morkel - 2092
Shai Hope - 1861
Callum Ferguson - 1684
Jack Leach - 1683
Shubman Gill - 1681
Mohammad Abbas - 1655
Kuldeep Yadav - 1402
Joe Burns - 928
Abdur Razzak- 898