In cricket there are players who get inextricably linked to the formative years of their nations forays into the sport. For England it was W.G. Grace. For Australia it was Fred Spofforth. For Afghanistan it will be Rashid Khan. This week, in the shadow of The Ashes, Rashid Khan pulled off a simply remarkable performance to lead his team to their second Test win. Rashid Khan is the poster boy of Afghanistan cricket and the fact that his team are the quickest to two Test wins is largely down to his performances, first against Ireland last year and then this week against Bangladesh. Rashid scored points in every category with the exception of fielding thanks to 75 runs off the bat and eleven wickets. For this to come so early in Afghanistan's Test history and against an established and burgeoning Test nation is even more extraordinary. The 465 points that Rashid accrued this week is, by far, his highest total of 2019 and sees him overtake Shakib Al Hasan, Jonny Bairstow and Virat Kohli to move into sixth place on the overall table. As Afghanistan head into a bright cricketing future, it is inevitable that Rashid will be there at the forefront if he saves his best performances for these big moments.
Rashid Khan's Afghanistan was facing off against one of his closest competitors this week as he shook hands with his fellow captain Shakib Al Hasan. At the start of the week there were just 32 points between 8th placed Shakib and 9th placed Rashid. Clearly the youngster had the better of the match and the individual performances but Shakib did not have too bad a return to the international fray either. With five wickets and 55 runs as well as a strangling economy, Shakib did enough to see himself finish third for the week, however it shows the gulf between him and Rashid that the Afghanistan spinner still had enough to overtake him and two other players despite Shakib's weekly total of 276. Rashid vs Shakib was not the only show in town though. Further up our table we saw two other players going to toe to toe as second placed Simon Harmer and third placed Jeetan Patel met in Birmingham. These two players have been synchronising with each other over the last few months and it seemed like they were determined to do so again this week. Harmer got six wickets. Patel got six wickets. Harmer got 40 points for 4 catches. Patel got 40 points for one catch and his economy. The thing that pushed one of them ahead of the other was runs off the bat. As well as his prowess with the ball, Jeetan Patel has become a doughty tailend batsman and got a half century this week. This saw him do enough to edge ahead in the contest and regain second place overall. He now has a 20 point jump on Harmer with two more fixtures in the County Championship. Patel will hope to extend his lead as much as he can because Harmer will be returning to his native South Africa as soon as things finish up in England to play in the Mzansi Super League. Patel will have to wait a little longer for New Zealand's domestic season to start. Either way I expect the two bowlers to continue to be locked together to the bitter end.
The weekly top five is rounded off by Morne Morkel. The South African is enjoying a solid if not spectacular year for Surrey and has seen himself floating around the middle of the table all year. In a year where Cricketers of the Week have been handed out with gay abandon, Morkel is probably the most high profile to have never claimed the accolade. In the whole of 2018 we awarded Cricketer of the Week to 17 players meaning that 7 went without the title. With three months left of this year, we have already given it to 18 players. The reasons for some of these are fairly straight forward; they've just had poor years. Bottom of the table Joe Burns and Abdur Razzak have simply not played enough cricket whilst Callum Ferguson (20th) has been inconsistent. Jack Leach has moved up to 18th this week and will probably be involved in England's Winter tours. In my opinion he is the most likely candidate to become the 19th player on our list to finish as top dog. I have spoken before about Kane Williamson and his aversion to finishing at the top of the tree; he is now the only player to have featured in every week since I started this and never won Cricketer of the Week. And then there's Morne Morkel. On his day an explosive bowler but never explosive enough to warrant the top spot. Always the bridesmaid and never the bride.
Week
Rashid Khan -465
Jeetan Patel - 291
Shakib Al Hasan - 276
Simon Harmer - 220
Morne Morkel - 164
Glenn Maxwell - 160
Joe Root - 121
Jack Leach - 116
Shubman Gill - 115
Duanne Olivier - 84
Jos Buttler - 75
Jonny Bairstow - 72
Ben Stokes - 47
Mohammad Abbas - dnp
Joe Burns - dnp
Callu, Ferguson - dnp
Shai Hope - dnp
Shreyas Iyer - dnp
Virat Kohli - dnp
Wayne Parnell - dnp
Abdur Razzak - dnp
Rohit Sharma- dnp
Kane Williamson - dnp
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp
Overall
Glenn Maxwell - 5052
Jeetan Patel - 4196
Simon Harmer - 4176
Ben Stokes - 3579
Joe Root- 3571
Rashid Khan - 3423
Virat Kohli- 3353
Jonny Bairstow - 3343
Shakib Al Hasan - 3226
Rohit Sharma - 2853
Jos Buttler - 2646
Wayne Parnell - 2619
Duanne Olivier - 2618
Shreyas Iyer - 2512
Kane Williamson - 2498
Morne Morkel - 2336
Jack Leach - 2007
Shubman Gill - 1990
Shai Hope - 1976
Callum Ferguson - 1790
Mohammad Abbas - 1705
Kuldeep Yadav - 1562
Joe Burns - 928
Abdur Razzak- 898
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