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
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