Back to back Cricketer of the Week accolades for two English Cricketers would make you think that English Test cricket was in the pink of health and that Chris Silverwood's debut as national coach has The Queen clamouring for her New Year's Honours List. Unfortunately this is not the case. After Ben Stokes' losing cause at the top of the weekly List last week, Joe Root followed suit this week with a massive 226 runs which sees him score 156 points more than second placed Callum Ferguson. Despite the batter friendly conditions in Hamilton, Root's career best Test score was a fitting way for him to re-enter the top 5. Yet again, this week saw the Top 5 change place considerably. Joe Root and, his age old enemy, Virat Kohli both shone on the international stage to force their agenda and move into 5th and 4th respectively. Despite scraping into the top five for the week, Ben Stokes was forced into sixth overall whilst inactive Rashid Khan has had the largest fall from grace. The Afghanistan spinner was fourth last week and has tumbled to seventh this week. England are now inactive for ten days until a warm up game in South Africa whilst India still have two more T20s and a three match ODI series against the West Indies to play. It seems that fourth place is Virat Kohli's to lose.
It is a rare treat to see Kane Williamson in the top 5. You need to go back to July and the World Cup for the last time the New Zealand captain graced one of the top 5 places. In fact his yield of 138 points for a century against England his highest score since that very week. It has been an unusually poor year for Kane Williamson but it is clear to see that when the talismanic captain plays he shoots up the table. This week he overtook no less than four players on The Cricket List and jumped from 19th berth to 16th. I wish no disrespect to those players around him, but for him to be in the mix alongside Morne Morkel, Shai Hope, Shubman Gill and Jack Leach shows that the New Zealander is under baked this year. In 2018, where Williamson finished 9th overall, he featured in 33 weeks of the year and averaged 128.82 points per week. With just three weeks left of 2019, Williamson has played in five fewer weeks and averages 97.61 points a week. That is a massive drop from the batsman and shows why he is in such a poor position comparatively. That being said, he is one of the few players in this list who will be seeing regular cricket all the way up to the end of the year thanks to the Test series against Australia so he could yet bridge that gulf.
This list is somewhat skewed towards two groups of players: international stars and County Championship imports. Two imports who disappointed this year have been doing rather better since returning to their home patches. Morne Morkel has been using the MSL to move himself up the table with a much greater rapidity than he was used to when turning out for Surrey. So destructive in the 2018 season, Morkel's numbers were dramatically down in 2019. In the 26 weeks that comprised the university games to the last round of fixtures in September, Morkel got 2438 points averaging 93.77 a week - this is including inactive weeks where the South African barely turned out in the T20 Blast or the Royal London One Day Cup. Many would have expected that to be the end of Morkel's year despite the fact that he was joining up with Tshwane. White ball cricket was not the forte of this player so a gradual slip down the table was only to be expected. This has not been the case. In the three weeks since the start of the MSL, Morkel has gained 262 points, an average of 87.33 a week - only 6.44 down on his red ball pomp. Not a bad showing from the old boy. Another veteran of the international scene who is absolutely tearing it up after a poor English summer is Callum Ferguson. In the 8 weeks that he has been back playing for South Australia, Ferguson has gained 854 points compared to the 1164 points he got in his 26 weeks playing for Worcestershire in all competitions. Ferguson's average in England was 50.61 whilst in 8 games back down under he averages a stonking 122 with three centuries in the last three weeks. This has seen Ferguson leap from 20th at the end of the County Championship to 14th this week - overtaking Leach, Gill, Hope, Morkel, Williamson and Parnell in the last seven days. The big question is whether Ferguson can keep this form up with Sydney Thunder in the BBL. If so, he could challenge those just outside the top ten with his late season form.
Week
Joe Root - 336
Callum Ferguson - 180
Virat Kohli - 144
Kane Williamson - 138
Ben Stokes - 76
Mohammad Abbas - 60
Morne Morkel - 52
Rohit Sharma - 28
Joe Burns - 4
Shreyas Iyer - 4
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
Jonny Bairstow- dnp
Jos Buttler - dnp
Shubman Gill - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Shai Hope - dnp
Rashid Khan - dnp
Jack Leach - dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Duanne Olivier - dnp
Wayne Parnell - dnp
Jeetan Patel - dnp
Abdur Razzak - dnp
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp
Overall
Glenn Maxwell - 5712
Simon Harmer - 5115
Jeetan Patel - 4650
Virat Kohli- 4241
Joe Root- 4215
Ben Stokes - 4174
Rashid Khan - 4124
Shakib Al Hasan -3862
Rohit Sharma - 3824
Jonny Bairstow - 3725
Shreyas Iyer - 3546
Jos Buttler - 3084
Duanne Olivier - 3021
Callum Ferguson - 2747
Wayne Parnell - 2743
Kane Williamson - 2733
Morne Morkel - 2700
Shai Hope - 2659
Shubman Gill - 2620
Jack Leach - 2598
Mohammad Abbas - 2099
Abdur Razzak- 1925
Kuldeep Yadav - 1760
Joe Burns - 1613
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