Callum Ferguson - The Best Cricketer of the Week

And then there were four. Simon Harmer has done it seven times. Glenn Maxwell has done it five times. This week Callum Ferguson was the 20th player in our 24 player list to win Cricketer of the Week. This then leaves a rather surprising quartet of players who have not topped the weekly list in 2019 - Jos Buttler, Jack Leach and Morne Morkel (a trio we will hear from later) and Kane Williamson - who has never topped the weekly list since we started this in January 2018. Ferguson rightfully deserves his place at the top of the tree this week. To score one century in a week is an achievement; to score two is a rarity. Ferguson's 249 runs in a calendar week has seen him moving up all kinds of tables. He is now the third highest run scorer in this year's Marsh Cup and is now South Australia's all-time leading one day run scorer. His 349 points have also seen him jump a near unprecedented four places on our overall list to finish this week in 16th. With our focus being on the moveable feast at the top of the list, it is easy to miss the fact that places 15 to 20 have just 157 points between them and lot of the movers and shakers in the weekly list come from the lower half of the pack list. Very few places are guaranteed this year.

I have been a little disappointed with Jos Buttler this year. He was a regular feature in the top ten last year and finished 2018 in fifth with 4846 points. This year he has not bothered the top ten and - with six weeks left in the year - is 1815 points off his 2018 total and in a distant twelfth position. His century this week against a New Zealand A side is signs of an upturn in his fortunes but it is indicative that his 190 for the week is the highest score since the ODI series against Pakistan in May - completely bypassing the World Cup and The Ashes. Two memorable stars of the Headingley Test Match have also used the New Zealand A warm up to make a move up the list. Jack Leach, another one of those players to never top the weekly list, has been stuck in the bottom third of the list all season but overhauled Shubman Gill and Morne Morkel this week to move up to 18th. Two weeks ago Ben Stokes was the bottom of the pile in that tightly stacked peloton of players chasing the top 3, however his 173 over the last fortnight has now seen him overtake Joe Root - a man who has long been in the top five but is now sliding down the table at just the wrong time. With a lot of England cricket on the horizon, some of the English boys on our list could force their agenda in the dying embers of the year.

It's been a really disappointing year for Morne Morkel. Last year, Morkel's 59 wickets for Surrey was the second highest in the division and would have earned him 1180 points on wickets alone were he included on our 2018 list. This year he got just 44 - a drop of 300 points. If you compare Morkel's nineteenth position on the overall list to his fellow County Championship stalwarts, in the form of second placed Simon Harmer and third placed Jeetan Patel, you can see just how far off the pace the ex-South African international really is. This week he was overtaken by Jack Leach - which really brings to bear the fact that spinners really are prevailing at the moment, whilst their fats bowling brethren appear to be left in the dust - maybe something that needs to be kept in mind when the 2020 list of players is compiled. This being said, Morkel did move up one place this week - his two wickets for Tshwane against Paarl was enough to see him past the inactive Shubman Gill- however with a handful of games left in 2019 hopes are not high for any further progression.

Week

Callum Ferguson - 349
Jos Buttler - 190
Shai Hope - 178
Jack Leach - 102
Rashid Khan - 98
Ben Stokes - 93
Duanne Olivier - 80
Jeetan Patel - 76
Morne Morkel - 60
Shreyas Iyer - 47
Joe Root - 32
Simon Harmer - 10

Mohammad Abbas - dnp
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
Jonny Bairstow - dnp
Joe Burns - dnp
Shubman Gill - dnp
Virat Kohli- dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Wayne Parnell - dnp
Abdur Razzak - dnp
Rohit Sharma - dnp
Kane Williamson - dnp
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp

Overall

Glenn Maxwell - 5712
Simon Harmer - 5115
Jeetan Patel - 4461
Rashid Khan - 4012
Virat Kohli- 3901
Ben Stokes - 3879
Shakib Al Hasan -3862
Joe Root- 3852
Rohit Sharma - 3747
Jonny Bairstow - 3725
Shreyas Iyer - 3343
Jos Buttler - 3031
Duanne Olivier - 2961
Wayne Parnell - 2743
Shai Hope - 2616
Callum Ferguson - 2567
Kane Williamson - 2524
Jack Leach - 2500
Morne Morkel - 2498
Shubman Gill - 2459
Mohammad Abbas - 2039
Abdur Razzak- 1925
Kuldeep Yadav - 1760
Joe Burns - 1472

Abdur Razzak - The Best Cricketer of the Week....again

Had you asked me a month ago I would have said the selection of veteran Bangladesh bowler Abdur Razzak was a mistake. Midway through October, Razzak was rooted at the foot of the table and 230 points behind second bottom Joe Burns. Fast forward to this week and Razzak has got Cricketer of the Week three weeks out of the last five and has swelled his total by 1027 points through 31 wickets in the Bangladesh Cricket League. He is now 21st and 453 points above Burns. This week he got 6 wickets for Khulna Division - a mere drop in the ocean to his twelve wickets the previous week but he should probably count himself lucky to become the second player to score back to back positions at the top of the weekly list. His score of 200 is the lowest top-scoring weekly points total since Shreyas Iyer's 142 ten weeks ago, however in a comparatively low scoring week he has the best of the rest of the field. His next target on the overall List is Mohammad Abbas who is just 114 points ahead of him and with the form that the veteran is in you would not put it past him nor begrudge him of it. In fact you would,not begrudge him a return to the national team, something the man himself suggested he was still hopeful for this week.

Witnessing the reshuffle of the top ten over the next few weeks should be lively. Last week I pointed out that there was just 185 points between fourth placed Virat Kohli and tenth placed Ben Stokes. This week there is just 189 points between fourth placed Rashid Khan and tenth placed Jonny Bairstow. Such is the fluidity of the top ten, that two performances from Rashid Khan and Ben Stokes that weren't enough to make the top 5 scores for the week saw everyone between fourth and tenth change spot. A mere two wickets in two matches for Afghanistan saw Rashid Khan overtake the disgraced Shakib Al Hasan - knocking him out of the top five - whilst also displacing a disappointing Virat Kohli, forcing him down to fifth. The figure of Rashid Khan snuggled up against Jeetan Patel and Simon Harmer is very nostalgic for those of us who were following The List last year. Ben Stokes' achievement was more impressive with 80 points from a 20 ball 30 and conceding 33 runs off 8 overs for an England XI in a warm up game against a New Zealand XI. He overtook an inactive Jonny Bairstow and another disappointing Indian batsman in the form of Rohit Sharma.

The performances of Shai Hope can fall into two categories in 2019. Ones where his slow strike rate was punctured by good bowling and those where his slow strike rate was allowed to mature by average bowling and he was able to go on and score big. The common denominator in all of these is......his slow strike rate. In the World Cup, a lot of the blame for this was placed at the feet of Chris Gayle whose pyrotechnics meant that you needed a batsman down the other end who would be able to play safe and keep the wagon rolling. Now we have seen the slightly remodelled West Indies 1.5 that Phil Simmons has put together and we see the same old Hope, we must start to think that this might just be his natural game. This hit and miss attitude has seen Hope underperform in this year's List. His century against Afghanistan this week sees him move into joint 17th place. Normally a player scoring a hundred in an ODI would be jostling for top spot, especially in a low scoring week, however this week Hope was lucky to scrape into the top five as all he registered was the 109 points for his runs plus the thirty bonus for his century. Undeniably the man is a talent. His century this week made him the fifth West Indian to score over a thousand runs in a calendar year, joining the illustrious names of Gayle, Desmond Haynes, Viv Richards and Brian Lara - however his point scoring credentials are negligible.

Week

Abdur Razzak - 200
Shreyas Iyer - 180
Callum Ferguson - 142
Shai Hope - 139
Simon Harmer - 106
Ben Stokes - 80
Mohammad Abbas - 70
Rashid Khan - 61
Joe Root - 51
Jos Buttler - 48
Kuldeep Yadav- 40
Duanne Olivier - 29
Joe Burns - 21
Jack Leach - 20
Rohit Sharma - 18
Virat Kohli - 10
Morne Morkel - 0

Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
Jonny Bairstow- dnp
Shubman Gill - dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Wayne Parnell - dnp
Jeetan Patel - dnp
Kane Williamson- dnp

Overall

Glenn Maxwell - 5712
Simon Harmer - 5105
Jeetan Patel - 4385
Rashid Khan - 3914
Virat Kohli- 3901
Shakib Al Hasan -3862
Joe Root- 3820
Ben Stokes - 3786
Rohit Sharma - 3747
Jonny Bairstow - 3725
Shreyas Iyer - 3296
Duanne Olivier - 2852
Jos Buttler - 2841
Wayne Parnell - 2743
Kane Williamson - 2524
Shubman Gill - 2459
Shai Hope - 2438
Morne Morkel - 2438
Jack Leach - 2398
Callum Ferguson - 2218
Mohammad Abbas - 2039
Abdur Razzak- 1925
Kuldeep Yadav - 1760
Joe Burns - 1472

Abdur Razzak - The Best Cricketer of the Week

The fact that, after forty five weeks, a player can come from the bottom three of the table and produce a simply astonishing performance shows that you are never quite dead in this game. Abdur Razzak has been rooted near the foot of the table for many months now. He has been at something of a disadvantage all year. He was the second to last player to register a point due to the fact that he didn't play until Week 9 and he has also been the most inactive player of 2019 with 32 inactive weeks. With this working against him, it is almost an achievement that he is not at the very foot of the table however his average points per week played is a fairly healthy 132.69 - a score that would often get you in the top five of The Weekly List. This week, however, was an exceptional one for the bowler with almost Harmer-like figures for the ex-Bangladesh international. He registered figures of 7-69 in the first innings and 5-71 as Khulna had the beating of Rangpur in the Bangladesh National Cricket League. This puts the 37 year old veteran at the top of the wicket taking tally with 25 wickets in five games. Since the start of this competition, he has picked up 897 points - not bad going considering that up until 5 weeks ago he had just 898 overall. As well as scoring his second Cricketer of the Week accolade, he also marked his 600th wicket in First Class cricket - the first Bangladeshi to achieve the feat. For the longest period of time it seemed like the bottom three of Kuldeep Yadav, Razzak and Joe Burns would remain at the foot of the table for the end of the year, however Razzak is now just 244 from a stuttering Mohammad Abbas. It might be the case that a resurgent Bangladesh player may do what Ravi Jadeja did last year and form a very late surge up The List and finish in mid table.

Rohit Sharma and Jonny Bairstow are in eighth and ninth place respectively on the overall List, however they have come from different directions. An astonishing IPL, a decent World Cup and a woeful Ashes saw Bairstow fall from a year high of third position to descend as the year went on. Sharma's year has gone in the opposite direction. A disappointing IPL saw him start the World Cup in 12th position. He then was the fourth highest player on our List for points gained during the World Cup and ended the tournament in eighth. Since then some phenomenal Test performances have seen him comfortably remain in the Top Ten. So these two talented batsmen are sandwiched together and appear locked in a bit of a dogfight as to who can move up the table and who may fall away. Last week Bairstow got a very impressive 193 whilst Rohit Sharma had a week off. This week Rohit finishes third with 154 whilst Bairstow is in 7th - however there is just 22 points between them. In fact positions four to ten are ridiculously close - with just 185 points between Virat Kohli and Ben Stokes. As we approach the closing weeks of the year that top ten position is still remarkably fluid.

And then we turn - yet again - to Kuldeep Yadav. Every time we talk about Kuldeep it is in negative terms. Throughout 2019 he has been phased out of the Test team, has seen Navdeep Saini put his ODI position in question and saw him finish the IPL on the bench for Kolkata. This week saw him return to his domestic team Uttar Pradesh for a fresh start. A chance to show what he can do at the start of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy....and he got just 26 points as Vidarbha needed only 7.5 runs to win the game. It really is looking bleak for the spinner. On the other side of the coin, it was another top five Week for Shubman Gill as he got 72 runs across his two games for Punjab. This has seen him jump two more places in the overall table and end the week in 16th place overall. The last two weeks has seen Shubman pick up 357 points - another sign that when the young man plays regularly he plays well. With a number of T20 games on the horizon it might be a good chance for the Indian batsman to challenge those above him - on the other side of the coin it might just be more of the same for Kuldeep.

Week

Abdur Razzak - 366
Shai Hope - 171
Rohit Sharma - 154
Shubman Gill - 153
Joe Burns- 126
Shreyas Iyer - 116
Jonny Bairstow - 103
Rashid Khan - 72
Callum Ferguson - 62
Kuldeep Yadav - 26
Simon Harmer - 25

Mohammad Abbas - dnp
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
Jos Buttler - dnp
Virat Kohli - dnp
Jack Leach - dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Morne Morkel - dnp
Duanne Olivier - dnp
Wayne Parnell - dnp
Jeetan Patel - dnp
Joe Root - dnp
Ben Stokes - dnp
Kane Williamson - dnp

Overall

Glenn Maxwell - 5712
Simon Harmer - 4999
Jeetan Patel - 4385
Virat Kohli- 3891
Shakib Al Hasan -3862
Rashid Khan - 3853
Joe Root- 3769
Rohit Sharma - 3747
Jonny Bairstow - 3725
Ben Stokes - 3706
Shreyas Iyer - 3116
Duanne Olivier - 2852
Jos Buttler - 2793
Wayne Parnell - 2743
Kane Williamson - 2524
Shubman Gill - 2459
Morne Morkel - 2438
Jack Leach - 2378
Shai Hope - 2299
Callum Ferguson - 2076
Mohammad Abbas - 1969
Abdur Razzak- 1725
Kuldeep Yadav - 1720
Joe Burns - 1451

Shubman Gill - The Best Cricketer of the Week

If you've been following the career of Shubman Gill over the last few years you will be used to his title as Indian cricket's next rising star. However the problem with rising stars is that sometimes they fade out of sight rather than bursting into life and, at times, it seemed like Shubman might pass us by and leave our orbit altogether. He has had a largely disappointing year overall and sits 18th on the overall list - however is this all his fault? Inarguably Gill is a talented Cricketer and in his last four games he has registered scores of 90 and over 3 times including his table topping performance of 143 for India C vs India A in the Deodhar Trophy this week. One needs to question, however, if the number of games he plays is hampering his progress. Gill is nominally a Punjab player however apart from a stint in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy he has been turning out for Kolkata in the IPL and a series of India representative teams. I can understand why the BCCI would protect one of their most precious young assets however the fact that he has played ten games since the middle of August means that he is lacking time in the middle. I would have been inclined to send him back to Punjab for the Vijay Hazare Trophy, get his confidence up and then bring him back in for the Deodhar - because when he is performing well he shoots up the list - we just need to see more of him. 

I heard the news about Glenn Maxwell as I got of a long haul flight where I had watched the documentary 'The Edge'. This spectacular film focuses on the psychological issues that effected Kevin Pietersen and Jonathan Trott once England had reached the top of the Test rankings in 2010. It brought home to me how the sport we all love can have such a profound effect on the mental health of players. One also wonders if this is especially the case for batsmen - who are out there in the middle with the eyes of millions and the vitriol of an opposing eleven focussed on them. Pietersen and Trott spoke about the fact that it was their form deteriorating that brought about their psychological problems - however Maxwell is at the top of his game at this moment in time. He got the fourth highest score in the week he made his decision and is still over 700 points clear at the top of the list - which brings home the fact that the psyche can attack you even when you're on the top of the world. We hope to see Glenn return before the end of the year but there are some outstanding performances which he will be characterised by in 2019. Think about his 209 runs in 3 T20 matches against India in March, think about his career best bowling figures of 5-40 for Lancashire against Middlesex and think about his five Cricketer of the Week accolades in 2019. Most importantly I think we also need to start thinking about the mental strain on Cricketers because it is not just Maxwell, Trott and Pietersen. This year has seen us return to mental health time and time again. We saw the retirement of Marcus Trescothick who was seen as something of an anomaly when he stepped away from the England team to cope with his anxiety in 2006 and the retirement of Sarah Taylor, one of the finest wicket keepers the game has ever seen, retiring at the age of 30 due to her choosing her wellbeing over her cricket. And yet we still boo Steve Smith and David Warner remorselessly around the country. We look back on the golden age of sledging without considering the effects. We still secretly revel in people getting after global superstars on Twitter. Maxwell stepped away from the game before it detrimentally effected his career in the long term and we hope to see him back in the yellow of Australia or the White of Victoria before the end of the year but we do also need to consider how we protect our players mental health as well as their physical health. 

So that's one potential farewell for one player. Now comes a slightly more forceful 'get out!' For a player that has bought our game into disrepute - not that you would know it from the way that some media outlets have covered the story. There have been some fairly unusual occurrences in Bangladesh cricket in the last fortnight; starting with the players threatening to boycott the India series; then the chairman granting all their requests immediately before turning around saying that he regretted complying to their demands. The culmination of this is the seemingly unconnected (but suspiciously timed) announcement that Shakib Al Hasan has been banned for playing for a year - with a further suspended year - due to not reporting three approaches from bookmakers in the last 18 months. This is difficult to cope with. Cricinfo covered this story interestingly posting tweets such as 'Bangladesh without Shakib is like---' asking for humorous responses and the people of Bangladesh took to the streets outside Shakib's house in Magura in protest to the decision. All of this seems unusual to me. It would be hypocritical to lay into Shakib after having just written about protecting players mental health - however not electing to report the approaches seems at best misguided and at worse suspicious. And there comes to an end the journey of one of just six players to have featured in our 2018 and 2019 list, the winner of three Cricketer of the Week awards this year and a further two last year, the player who received the most points during that unforgettable World Cup. The fact that all of this has been tarnished is lamentable. Shakib finishes with 3862 points with a host of players ready to usurp him from his top ten spot by the end of the year. 

Week

Shubman Gill - 204
Abdur Razzak - 202
Jonny Bairstow - 193
Glenn Maxwell - 132
Mohammad Abbas - 112
Joe Burns - 1

Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
Callum Ferguson - dnp 
Simon Harmer - dnp 
Shai Hope - dnp 
Shreyas Iyer - dnp 
Rashid Khan - dnp 
Virat Kohli - dnp 
Jack Leach - dnp 
Morne Morkel- dnp 
Duanne Olivier - dnp 
Wayne Parnell - dnp 
Jeetan Patel - dnp 
Joe Root - dnp 
Rohit Sharma - dnp
Ben Stokes - dnp 
Kane Williamson - dnp 
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp 

Overall 

Glenn Maxwell - 5712
Simon Harmer - 4974
Jeetan Patel - 4385
Virat Kohli- 3891
Shakib Al Hasan -3862
Rashid Khan - 3781
Joe Root- 3769
Ben Stokes - 3706
Jonny Bairstow - 3622
Rohit Sharma - 3593
Shreyas Iyer - 3000
Duanne Olivier - 2852
Jos Buttler - 2793
Wayne Parnell - 2743 
Kane Williamson - 2524
Morne Morkel - 2438
Jack Leach - 2378
Shubman Gill - 2306
Shai Hope - 2128
Callum Ferguson - 2014
Mohammad Abbas - 1969
Kuldeep Yadav - 1694
Abdur Razzak- 1359
Joe Burns - 1325