In a week where precious little cricket was played by our contributors, there was one nation that stood head and shoulders over the rest. In our (notional) top 5 this week there is no less than 3 Indian players. Leading the pack this week is a young Indian batsman who is forcing his agenda for selection in all forms of the game through his A team performances. August was a good month for Shreyas Iyer. After having having the good fortune to be left out of India's World Cup run, he benefited from their underwhelming performance to be one of the call ups for the West Indies series and did himself proud. This week he followed that up with his return to A team action where he impressed in two rain affected games against South Africa A to continue his rise up the table. Thanks to a very strong start to the year Iyer's period of inaction over the middle months of the year meant that he never sunk below mid table overall. This week has seen overtake Kane Williamson and move into 14th. The other Indian player to move up the table is a more high profile one. Virat Kohli thrives in matches against the West Indies - and this week was no exception. His score of 76 runs with three catches in the field was enough for him to finish second this week despite the fact he was out for a duck in the second innings. His 126 runs for the week see him overtake Jonny Bairstow and move into sixth. The last name to make up our Indian trio is Shubman Gill. In a normal week a total of 83 would be unlikely to see you finish in the top five and, in truth, Gill would be disappointed to get just 43 runs across three One Day games however there he is bringing up the rear in this Indian summer for Indian cricket.
Perhaps while we are talking all thing Indian we should linger over two Indian players who received zero this week. For the longest period of time Kuldeep Yadav's form for the Indian Test team was the only thing that was keeping his head above water and buoying him up from his year being a total embarrassment. The last couple of weeks have seen this slip away from him. Yadav has now played neither Test against the West Indies and had a disappointing time of it in the ODIs. Stranded, as he is, in the bottom 3 with a 143 point gap between him and Mohammad Abbas, you cannot help but feel that a Ravindra Jadeja style spurt up the table is becoming increasingly unlikely. With the rise of Navdeep Saini and the evergreen Ravi Ashwin (formerly of this parish), Kuldeep must be feeling the pressure for his place in the team. Another, more high profile, omission from these two Test matches is tenth place Rohit Sharma. A strong contributor in the World Cup and a decent warm up game against a West Indies A side did not impress the Indian selectors enough to give him a berth in the first team. With Hanuma Vihari performing so well in his stead, one can't help but wonder if this was the last chance for Sharma to convert his short ball prowess into a Test career. As we approach the last third of the year, we turn our minds to who might be on our list for 2020. Yadav and Sharma are both players who have question marks over their continuation - however with a T20 World Cup Sharma is a more favourable selection than his younger compatriot.
I have questioned Rashid Khan all the way though 2019. He has seemed under baked throughout the year. Whether it be in the IPL or in the T20 Blast, his form is significantly down from 2018 and his World Cup was a disappointment. This being said it has been a long while since Rashid has bowled in Asia and, whenever he joins up with his national side he always gets a boost. If you join this together, we could see a boost up the table. The series kicked off with a four day warm up game against a Bangladesh Cricket Board XI that saw Rashid pick up three wickets and get his highest weekly score for six weeks. We talk about Rashid Khan as if he has been around for ages, however he is still (officially) twenty and we could be in for another decade and a half of the young Afghanistan spinner breaking boundaries, however to do this he will need consistency and flexibility. My biggest fear for Rashid is that he will turn into a second Mustafizur Rahman. The Fizz burst on to the scene with all the pyrotechnics of Rashid and took the world by storm but soon enough his sparkle began to leave him. He is still capable of big performances (see his back to back fivefers in the World Cup) but he is nowhere near the standard he was expected to obtain. This Is down to the fact he was something of a One trick pony and once his action had been spotted he needed to adapt or perish. Rashid needs to learn from this and regularly be hitting his straps and varying his deliveries in order to be as destructive as he was in 2018.
Week
Shreyas Iyer - 142
Virat Kohli - 126
Rashid Khan - 123
Shubman Gill - 83
Glenn Maxwell - 34
Simon Harmer - 20
Mohammad Abbas - dnp
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
Jonny Bairstow - dnp
Joe Burns - dnp
Jos Buttler - dnp
Callum Ferguson - dnp
Shai Hope - dnp
Jack Leach - dnp
Morne Morkel - dnp
Duanne Olivier - dnp
Wayne Parnell - dnp
Jeetan Patel - dnp
Abdur Razzak - dnp
Joe Root - dnp
Rohit Sharma - dnp
Ben Stokes - dnp
Kane Williamson - dnp
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp
Overall
Glenn Maxwell - 4892
Simon Harmer - 3956
Jeetan Patel - 3905
Ben Stokes - 3532
Joe Root- 3450
Virat Kohli- 3353
Jonny Bairstow - 3271
Shakib Al Hasan - 2990
Rashid Khan - 2958
Rohit Sharma - 2853
Wayne Parnell - 2619
Jos Buttler - 2571
Duanne Olivier - 2534
Shreyas Iyer - 2512
Kane Williamson - 2498
Morne Morkel - 2172
Shai Hope - 1976
Jack Leach - 1891
Shubman Gill - 1875
Callum Ferguson - 1790
Mohammad Abbas - 1705
Kuldeep Yadav - 1562
Joe Burns - 928
Abdur Razzak- 898
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