Kohli is becoming a legend of Indian cricket. On his day nobody can beat the elfin Indian captain - however it is rapidly looking like that he will finish fourth in our list for the second year on the Trott. His 159 points accrued this week from innings of 19 and 70 against his favourite team - the West Indies - has pulled him 185 points away from fifth placed Joe Root. With two weeks left in the year it seems likely that Kohli will get at least fourth placed in the overall List for the year. Root has warm up matches and the first Test against South Africa whilst Kohli has further ODIs against West Indies - his favoured format against his favourite team. So with the chasing pack out of the picture we start to look upwards. Stalwart of our list, Jeetan Patel is a full 370 points ahead of Kohli and has just started his campaign for Wellington in the Super Smash with three wickets and a third place finish for the week. Whilst T20 is not Patel's favoured format, he will play enough games and has enough of a cushion to ensure that he can hold Kohli off. In fact, he is 345 points away from second placed Simon Harmer so it is not out of the question that Harmer, who will now be inactive for the last two weeks, may drop to third. One thing that is becoming increasingly clear is that Glenn Maxwell is very likely to be our star man for 2019.
This year's Cricket List has brought about an abundance of times when our top 5 for the week have featured a plethora of Indian talent. There have only been 20 weeks of the year where an Indian player has not made the weekly top 5 and this week is the sixth occasion where three Indian players feature - as Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill join Kohli. Rohit bagged another half century in the first T20 against the West Indies and in doing so became the latest player to leapfrog the disgraced Shakib Al Hasan. Sharma is now 8th with Rashid Khan 154 above him. Rashid is about to join up with Adelaide for some T20 action in the BBL so there could still be a bit of a tussle between the two of them to see who can jostle their way to finish just outside the top 5. Further down the list you will find Shubman Gill. A player whose top five aspirations died out many a moon ago. Shubman has been a frustrating prospect this year. When he plays he registers good scores - averaging 96 points across his 28 active weeks. However it is those 22 inactive weeks that really held him back. If he played as many weeks as this week's top Cricketer, Virat Kohli, he would have had 3456, enough to boost his position six places and be just outside the top ten. Instead he has to satisfy himself with overtaking Shai Hope into 18th position. He is undoubtably a decent Cricketer but his position in next year's list is in question thanks to his lack of cricket.
When it is clear that a player won't make the top ten summary on New Year's Eve and may not make the List for the next year, I feel that it is nice to offer something of a cricketing obituary for one of our soon to be departed brethren. Morne Morkel was a debutant to our list this year and is unlikely to feature next year after a disappointing year for Surrey, surprisingly salvaged by a burst of T20 form that helped his Tshwane side reach the final of the MSL. Barely mentioned in these posts for the bulk of the year, I have been forced to dedicate some time to him over the last few weeks due to his spurt up the table. At the start of the MSL, the veteran South African was in 17th; he finishes it in joint 14th and 322 points better off with a game still to play. Short of a legendary performance in the final, Morkel will finish the year as one of four players that did not win Cricketer of the Week in 2019 (alongside Jos Buttler, Jack Leach and Kane Williamson) and will have achieved a fairly nondescript year of cricket. His highest scoring week of 2019 came in Week 23 where he got 252 points through a seven wicket haul against Somerset. I think it very fitting that Surrey did not win that match and he did not feature in the write up for that week. If you do not feature in 2020, goodbye Morne - the invisible man of the 2019 campaign.
Week
Virat Kohli - 159
Rohit Sharma- 146
Jeetan Patel - 120
Shubman Gill - 68
Morne Morkel - 60
Mohammad Abbas - 50
Kuldeep Yadav - 40
Shreyas Iyer - 20
Callum Ferguson - 13
Shakib Al Hassan - dnp
Jonny Bairstow- dnp
Jos Buttler - dnp
Joe Burns - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Shai Hope - dnp
Rashid Khan - dnp
Jack Leach - dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Duanne Olivier - dnp
Wayne Parnell - dnp
Joe Root - dnp
Abdur Razzak - dnp
Ben Stokes - dnp
Kane Williamson - dnp
Overall
Glenn Maxwell - 5712
Simon Harmer - 5115
Jeetan Patel - 4770
Virat Kohli- 4400
Joe Root- 4215
Ben Stokes - 4174
Rashid Khan - 4124
Rohit Sharma - 3970
Shakib Al Hasan -3862
Jonny Bairstow - 3725
Shreyas Iyer - 3566
Jos Buttler - 3084
Duanne Olivier - 3021
Callum Ferguson - 2760
Morne Morkel - 2760
Wayne Parnell - 2743
Kane Williamson - 2733
Shubman Gill - 2688
Shai Hope - 2659
Jack Leach - 2598
Mohammad Abbas - 2149
Abdur Razzak- 1925
Kuldeep Yadav - 1800
Joe Burns - 1613
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