A good year sees a player perform well over a short period of time. Amazing years are where a player performs well all throughout the year. This is the third time Ben Stokes has finished as Cricketer of the Week. The first was in February when he was the stand out performer in a poor series against the West Indies. The second was that wondrous Headingley performance in May. Now, as his home nation is shrouded in ice and darkness, he has bookended his spectacular year with another high quality performance. It does seem rather ironic that on the three occasions that Stokes has finished top of the tree it has been for performing above expectations in a disappointing team performance - and this week was no exception. A humiliating innings defeat to New Zealand where the England bowling line up looked (at best) toothless and (definitely) brainless saw Stokes get 219 points - 63% of which were for his batting performance. He was, by some distance, the highest run scorer in the first innings and stopped the game from being even worse than it could have been. Stokes' highest weekly score since Headingley was enough to see him back into the top five; muscling Virat Kohli - who scored a century himself this week - into sixth. Stokes' team-mate and captain Joe Root rounds off the movement at the top of the table as his disappointing score of 63 was enough to see him overtake Shakib Al Hasan and take seventh spot.
There was also a hell of a lot of movement down at the bottom of the table. Last week places sixteen to twenty read: Callum Ferguson, Kane Williamson, Jack Leach, Morne Morkel and Shubman Gill. Over the course of this week, that has completely turned on it's head. After finishing top of the List last week, Callum Ferguson may regret his week off as he drops from 16th to 20th. The other player descending was Kane Williamson who drops from 17th to an all-time low of 19th - despite the fact that he scored points for the first time in a month. The two players to take advantage of this reshuffle were Morne Morkel and Shubman Gill who executed a switcheroo with their antipodean brethren. Shubman Gill did not set the world alight in two of his three Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy games, however got 78 in the final game of the week against Mumbai to help him grab a total of 161 for the week and move from 20th to 17th. Surprisingly Morne Morkel has also used a T20 tournament to boost his score. More of a doyenne of the red ball, the veteran South Africa got five wickets in two games for Tshwane to register his highest score since September and move from 19th up to sixteenth. As we enter the last month of this year's Cricket List, it is as tight at the bottom as it is at the top. Just 179 points separate Wayne Parnell in sixteenth and Callum Ferguson in twentieth. It is all to play for.......unless you are Mohammad Abbas, Abdur Razzak or Joe Burns.
A glint of hope is opening up for Glenn Maxwell. When he revealed his mental health problems and his intention to step away from the game for an indeterminate period of time, he received an outpouring of support both within and outside the game. At the time he was top of the list and 738 points clear of Simon Harmer. Many expected the chasing pack to catch up with the Australian but, four weeks later, Maxwell is still numero uno and with a cushion of just 597 points. The usually unstoppable Simon Harmer has looked distinctly stoppable in that time and his total of just 141 from his five MSL games leaves a lot to be desired. This was clearly a sentiment also shared by Donovan Miller, who has this week dropped the ex-captain from his team. With the Johannesburg side rooted to the bottom of the table, Simon Harmer is likely to have just three more games in him this year. If Simon Harmer is out of the running we should turn our attention to the rest of the pack. Third place Jeetan Patel will be playing all month for Wellington but he is 1062 points behind Maxwell. It is feasible Patel might overtake Harmer but he will have to go some to take top spot. The next highest placed player is Rashid Khan who is 1578 points off the Australian - an impossibly high amount of points to overturn. It is starting to seem that Maxwell has built up such an impressive lead that, despite two months inactive, he will be crowned the winner of The Cricket List 2019 after all.
Week
Ben Stokes - 219
Shreyas Iyer - 199
Virat Kohli - 196
Jeetan Patel - 189
Shubman Gill - 161
Morne Morkel - 150
Joe Burns - 137
Rashid Khan - 112
Jack Leach - 98
Kane Williamson - 71
Joe Root - 63
Duanne Olivier- 60
Jos Buttler - 53
Shai Hope - 43
Rohit Sharma - 31
Mohammad Abbas - dnp
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
Jonny Bairstow- dnp
Callum Ferguson - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Wayne Parnell - dnp
Abdur Razzak - dnp
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp
Overall
Glenn Maxwell - 5712
Simon Harmer - 5115
Jeetan Patel - 4650
Rashid Khan - 4124
Ben Stokes - 4098
Virat Kohli- 4097
Joe Root- 3915
Shakib Al Hasan -3862
Rohit Sharma - 3796
Jonny Bairstow - 3725
Shreyas Iyer - 3542
Jos Buttler - 3084
Duanne Olivier - 3021
Wayne Parnell - 2743
Shai Hope - 2659
Morne Morkel - 2648
Shubman Gill - 2620
Jack Leach - 2598
Kane Williamson - 2595
Callum Ferguson - 2567
Mohammad Abbas - 2039
Abdur Razzak- 1925
Kuldeep Yadav - 1760
Joe Burns - 1609
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