David Warner - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Word on the street was that David Warner was on the out and out. From his highest position of fourth in Week 3, Warner had had 5 weeks of decline in the table culminating in last week's low of seventeenth - third from bottom. Some of this can be put down to three inactive weeks however sandwiched either side of those inactive periods was a score of just 3 points in the last ODI with India and just 4 points from the first T20 against South Africa. It is difficult to know just where to expect Warner to finish this season. His only previous showing on our list was third place in 2018 when he only played the first two and a half months of the year - however third from bottom is not indicative of his skill. This week we have seen a dynamic surge up the table and his first ever Cricketer of the Week accolade. His double half centuries in back to back T20Is sees him lurch from that low base of seventeenth into a slightly more respectable thirteenth spot. It has been an over all good week for the Australian. As well as his performances on the field, there have been signs of good things to come as he was reappointed Hyderabad's captain for the IPL. This forebodes more regular T20 games just around the corner and (perhaps) the chance to score big points. Does a top ten place beckon?

It's been quite a week for Australians with our antipodean contingent moving up a cumulative twelve places in the overall list. Two other players who have used the T20I series against South Africa as an opportunity to move up the table are Steve Smith and Aaron Finch. In a remarkable show of synchronicity, both players scored 119 points to finish in joint fifth for the week. Having never happened in the last two years of these posts, this is the second time that two players have got the exact same amount of points in a week this year. Whilst their scores were exactly the same, their performances with the bat were different. Finch, who moves from tenth place into seventh on the overall list, had one big score of 55 and a disappointing score of 14. On the other hand Steve Smith contributed with two solid contributions of 29 and 30 which saw him move back into the top 5 after two weeks in seventh spot. What this is starting to show is that Australia are forming quite the formidable top three in preparation for the World Cup. If David Warner and Aaron Finch go big as they did in the third T20, Steve Smith can then go on and act as the anchor. If the openers do not do well, Smith can step up. By the time the World Cup roles around in August I would expect to see all three batsmen in the top ten - and from there....who knows?

As we approach the end of February we need to see who has made the month their own. Only four players have made two or more weeks of solid progression up the Overall List this month. Keshav Maharaj has moved from 11th to 1st and has made progress in every week of February so he is perhaps the obvious candidate for a Cricketer of the Month award. As previously mentioned, Aaron Finch has used the T20 series against a weak South Africa side to move up the table for the last two weeks whilst Travis Head has been quietly accumulating points to move from 14th to 10th throughout February. However the player who has been an underground success on our list is Lewis Gregory who has featured for the England Lions and Peshawar throughout February and has moved up from 16th at the start of the month to eleventh this month - an improvement of 386 points. Whilst Maharaj is the obvious success of February, his reward is the top spot on the overall list. Lewis Gregory needs recognition for the sheer amount of performances he has put in -playing in all three formats of the game and all over the world.

Week

David Warner - 214
Martin Guptill- 195
Keshav Maharaj- 180
Tom Banton - 131
Aaron Finch - 119
Steve Smith - 119
Travis Head- 118
Lewis Gregory - 116
Babar Azam - 79
Jason Holder - 55
Peter Handscomb - 37
Virat Kohli- 31

Kyle Abbott - dnp
Colin Ackermann- dnp
Shubman Gill - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Marnus Labuschagne- dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Mohammad Nabi - dnp
Joe Root - dnp
Rohit Sharma - dnp
Ben Stokes - dnp

Overall

Keshav Maharaj - 1094
Martin Guptill - 1082
Ben Stokes - 1062
Steve Smith - 846
Joe Root - 829
Virat Kohli - 760
Aaron Finch - 759
Shubman Gill - 752
Marnus Labuschagne - 685
Travis Head - 681
Lewis Gregory - 667
Glenn Maxwell - 650
David Warner - 620
Mohammad Nabi - 590
Tom Banton - 543
Babar Azam - 486
Rohit Sharma - 471
Peter Handscomb - 347
Jason Holder- 167

Keshav Maharaj - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Besides the ever growing gap between Stokes and the chasing field, the top five has shifted Week to Week over the first couple of months of 2020. Stokes has now been number one on the overall list for four weeks. In his first week at top spot he had a huge lead on second place Marnus Labuschagne, in Week two and three Martin Guptill was pushing him for top spot and this week a player has come out of nowhere to challenge the England all-rounder. Keshav Maharaj is a known prospect to Stokes - and in their most recent on-field battle the South African was rather found out - however Maharaj looks something of an unstoppable force in the Momentum One Day Cup. This week he jumped from 6th place to second off the back of a solitary game where the Dolphins player bagged a half century and a Fourier against the Cape Cobras - a handy 200 points to see him surge up the table once again. At the start of February, Maharaj was in 12th position but three weeks of improvement up the table have seen him rise to 148 points of the top spot. So far in this tournament he has taken 11 wickets in 5 matches, second only to Thando Ntini who has just one more despite playing two more games. He is also coupling this with an average of over 50 with the bat. Maharaj really isn't playing games this year and is following in the footsteps of Glenn Maxwell who got to top spot last year with impressive all round performance. Stokes will not play for England again for four weeks and in that time Maharaj's Dolphins will have played at least three times. It is a very real possibility that the South African could take top spot as soon as next week - or could he be the third challenger to fade away in the style of Guptill and Labuschagne?

Now we have seen a return to long form cricket in Australia, we have seen some of our less prolific Aussies come to the fore again. The highest score from an Australian this week did not come from their T20 mauling of South Africa but instead from the more prosaic match up between South and Western Australia. Travis Head has had a mixed year; after a huge score at the back end of 2019 his performances have been variable in 2020. Never higher than 9th on the overall list, he slid as far down the league as 14th last week before 95 runs split across two innings against Western Australia saw him acquire 105 points for the week and finish fifth on the weekly list. This could easily have been at least 20 points more if he had inched over the half century threshold at least once - falling short by four runs in the first innings and a solitary run in the second. Unlucky possibly but luck has certainly been on his side already this year. This week's score is not his highest for 2020 as Head won Cricketer of the Week in Week 5 for four games in the BBL - edging out Matin Guptill thanks to sheer weight of games played. Where he gained points that week he has potentially lost some this. What is impressive is the versatility of Head; finishing in the top five for the Week twice - once for T20 cricket and once for the longest form. There is a belief that he is the sort of player that could plug a gap in the middle order of Australia's ODI side - if that comes to pass he could be a top ten prospect very easily.

Due to this being a T20 World Cup year, our list has had more of a short form focus this year than in previous. This has seen far greater number of bodies turning out for PSL franchises than we have ever had before. Peshawar is likely to be our principle focus over the next month or so as both Tom Banton and Lewis Gregory are turning out for the North-Western Pakistan franchise, however this week Banton scored a mere 13 runs and an injury picked up with the England Lions has stopped Gregory from making his debut. Instead our focus is on one of Pakistan's favourite sons, Babar Azam. Due to lack of game time Azam has been propping up the table and even his century against Bangladesh only saw him jump up a solitary spot. He will be hoping to use the PSL as a spring board up the table and has started the competition brightly with 78 for Karachi against Peshawar. This has seen him gain another place on the overall list. As it stands he is in 16th place, with a disappointing looking Tom Banton 5 points ahead of him and an inactive Rohit Sharma 64 points ahead. Another couple of decent performances will catapult Azam closer to where he should be - a firm top ten prospect.

Week

Keshav Maharaj- 200
Babar Azam - 118
Jason Holder - 112
Ben Stokes- 112
Travis Head - 105
Lewis Gregory - 85
Aaron Finch - 82
Peter Handscomb-71
Steve Smith- 65
Marnus Labuschagne- 36
Tom Banton - 23
David Warner - 14
Shubman Gill - 8
Martin Guptill- 0
Virat Kohli - 0

Kyle Abbott - dnp
Colin Ackermann - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Mohammad Nabi- dnp
Joe Root - dnp
Rohit Sharma - dnp

Overall

Ben Stokes - 1062
Keshav Maharaj - 914
Martin Guptill - 887
Joe Root - 829
Shubman Gill - 752
Virat Kohli - 729
Steve Smith - 727
Marnus Labuschagne - 685
Glenn Maxwell - 650
Aaron Finch - 640
Mohammad Nabi - 590
Travis Head - 563
Lewis Gregory - 551
Rohit Sharma - 471
Tom Banton - 412
Babar Azam - 407
David Warner - 406
Peter Handscomb - 310
Jason Holder- 112

Lewis Gregory - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Through a combination of injury, players being rested and the cessation of the BBL, we have seen the number of non active players jump up hugely this week. We have also seen the list settling down rather. Only four players made any movement on the overall list and we saw a few players make double figure scores and yet it not have an effect on their overall position. This did not apply to our Cricketer of the Week who used an A team tour for it's exact purpose - to showcase your abilities against a weak opponent. Lewis Gregory is an undoubtedly talented player and should feel most aggrieved that he happened to reach his cricketing maturation at the same time as Ben Stokes was the most dominant force in world cricket (and the leader of our overall List). In many ways Gregory does exactly what Stokes does....just a little bit worse. His performance this week against a New South Wales XI had a Stokesian aspect to it. Two wickets at an economy of 3.29 plus a 34 ball 55 and a catch in the field is an all round performance that even the Durham man would be proud of. But the difference is that it was against a second string Sheffield Shield side who had three players making their debut. In order to shrug off the mantle of being a store brand Stokes, he needs to be doing this more regularly. His average weekly score for his three active weeks before this week was 93.66 - decent, but this was still against teams of the calibre of a Cricket Australia XI and Dhaka. This week saw him jump from sixteenth to thirteenth and he is already chasing the pack from the top ten. It is still early days for the Somerset player but he needs to up his game to be a force on our List. He is going to be a key player for Peshawar in the PSL which will help, but he will need to improve on his 292 runs he gained for Rangpur in the BPL.

So that is the highest scoring player for the week, however he wasn't the biggest mover up the overall table. That accolade goes to two players I wrote about last week: Shubman Gill and Keshav Maharaj. Gill was a player that I have consistently questioned the consistency of however over the last fortnight he has scored back to back centuries for (what I believe is) the first time in his career. He really is picking up some momentum in his international career and may be forcing his way into a Test berth for the men in blue - especially with the injury to twelfth place Rohit Sharma. This has been reflected in his surge up the table. Last week he bumped his way up the table from seventeenth to ninth; this week he has improved his position by a further five to find himself in fourth position overall. Sandwiched between the figures of Joe Root in third and Virat Kohli in fifth is a very lofty position for the boy from Punjab; how long can he keep his foot on the accelerator? Maharaj also followed in Gill's footsteps with his second top five finish in a row and a five place improvement on the overall table largely thanks to one of his two matches for the Dolphins in the Momentum One Day Cup. His four wickets at an economy of 3.20 coupled with a catch against the bottom of the table Knights saw his dominant franchise continue their impressive spell in the competition and continue to force his own personal agenda as a spinner of high quality. We are used to seeing a South African bowler on the up and up on this list - however it is usually Simon Harmer, who is pointless thus far in the year. We are not even a quarter of the way through this franchise competition yet and with the South African spinner fifteen points off a top five position I wouldn't be surprised to see more progression from the joint highest wicket taker of the tournament.

I said the overall list was settling down quite nicely and Babar Azam is proof of this. Azam is one of the hottest prospects in world cricket but has only featured in two games so far this year - scoring 116 points in one game and zero in the other. At the start of the week he was rock bottom of active players. His impeccable Day Two performance for Pakistan in their First Test against Bangladesh was one of the more high profile performances of the Week and when he went to stumps many were salivating over a potential double ton - however this did not come to pass. Despite this he still finished fourth with 173 points for the week and was part of the 12 point pile up between 1st and 4th. This success for the week has not had the desired impact on his overall placing for the year, however, as he moved up just one place, leap-frogging Peter Handscomb into seventeenth position. Looking further up the table he is another 100 points of sixteenth place Tom Banton - already a gulf is starting to form at the bottom of the table. There will be a lot of cricket to play for Azam as he joins up with Karachi for the PSL, finishes the series with Bangladesh and, ultimately, rejoins Somerset - he will not be this close to the bottom when the final tally is counted. This gulf is probably more concerning for our four inactive players; Kyle Abott, Colin Ackermann, Simon Harmer and Jason Holder. If a top five performance sees you sluggishly crawl from bottom to second bottom, these four players, who are already 239 points (and counting) below our least effective active player they have got a world of catching up to do when they join the melee.

Week

Lewis Gregory - 185
Keshav Maharaj - 184
Shubman Gill - 176
Babar Azam- 173
Ben Stokes - 141
Martin Guptill- 106
Joe Root - 69
Tom Banton - 62
Virat Kohli - 29

Kyle Abbott - dnp
Colin Ackermann - dnp
Aaron Finch- dnp
Peter Handscomb- dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Travis Head - dnp
Jason Holder - dnp
Marnus Labuschagne- dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Mohammad Nabi- dnp
Rohit Sharma- dnp
Steve Smith - dnp
David Warner - dnp

Overall

Ben Stokes - 950
Martin Guptill - 887
Joe Root - 829
Shubman Gill - 744
Virat Kohli - 729
Keshav Maharaj - 714
Steve Smith - 662
Glenn Maxwell - 650
Marnus Labuschagne - 649
Mohammad Nabi - 590
Aaron Finch - 558
Rohit Sharma - 471
Lewis Gregory - 466
Travis Head - 458
David Warner - 392
Tom Banton - 389
Babar Azam - 289
Peter Handscomb - 239

Shubman Gill - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Here, at the early point of the year, one strong week can see you shoot up the table; taking you from a nowhere man to a challenger. Shubman Gill has had one of those weeks. And he is capable of them. Last year he bagged Cricketer of the Week twice out of nowhere, whilst the likes of Jos Buttler and Kane Williamson ended with none. One of the biggest criticism is his lack of consistency; at times he can look like a world beater but at other times he looks just a jot above average. Before this week he averaged 26.2 with the bat across four matches in 2020 - three against New Zealand A and one Ranji Trophy game. His form was tepid - and it was telling that when Rohit Sharma got injured his name was not even in the frame for a call up despite the fact that it was evident that the replacement was bound to come from the India A team. It was only early February and Gill was already in 17th position - one place off bottom, a placing he was used to throughout 2019. Then he turned his eye to the longest form of the game and got 287 in the first Unofficial Test against New Zealand A and rocketed up the table with his highest ever score since we have been tracking his performances. He now finds his way into the top ten for the first time ever and there is another Test being played as we speak. The problem is Gill struggles to keep his foot on the accelerator. In order to be a major player in this list and in world cricket he needs to eradicate this lack of consistency from his game and be a more ruthless figure. Only time will tell.

Why it happens we will never know, but for the last three years of monitoring the top players in the world Virat Kohli and Joe Root just won't leave each other alone. Week after week and month after month we see the captains of India and England sandwiched together, most often in the overall list but also in the weekly list. This week they both end up in the top five with Root finishing second and Kohli in fifth. On the overall list it is a similar picture with Root in third and Kohli 60 points behind him in 4th. It is not just in point accumulation that these two players are similar. Both seem to be able to grind out a good amount of points very regularly whilst looking unassuming. This week Joe Root got 91 in a warm up match and 17 in the first ODI against South Africa whilst Kohli got 51 and 15 in two ODIs against New Zealand. Solid but not electric - but the two still regularly pick up three figure scores and end in the weekly top five through their consistency. So far this year only three players have scored 100 in four weeks or more: Kohli, Root and Martin Guptill. In the same way as I criticise Gill for not being able to produce Week in Week out, I must laud Kohli and Root for their consistently decent performances.

Keshav Maharaj is one of the most unknown prospects on this year's list. He is the latest in a long list of South African bowlers that we have kept our eye on over the course of these posts. Obviously the most successful was Simon Harmer but last year's inclusion of Duanne Olivier and Morne Morkel proved a little far off the mark. Already in 2020, Maharaj has had some decent performances (a five wicket haul against England for instance) but also some weeks where he has been inactive including missing the final Test. This week he had another decent outing in a different form of the game - getting 143 points and finishing fourth for the week thanks to two Momentum One Day Cup games for the Dolphins. Despite some strong performances, Maharaj has yet to breech the top ten, reaching a high of eleventh the week before last and then returning there this week. Maharaj is undoubtably a talent but he needs to be playing regularly. He could rack up a decent amount of points during the One Day Cup but that could be it for him until he links up with Yorkshire in the County Championship. This being said, with South Africa's next Test series not until July there could be a long spell away from the action for the spinner. The dynamic (semi) all rounder needs to score big whilst the sun shines for fear he may end up as another Saffer damp squib.

Week

Shubman Gill - 377
Joe Root - 188
Martin Guptill- 153
Keshav Maharaj- 143
Virat Kohli- 116
Rohit Sharma- 100
Lewis Gregory - 75
Steve Smith - 61
Tom Banton- 51
Glenn Maxwell - 49
Peter Handscomb - 26

Kyle Abbott - dnp
Colin Ackermann - dnp
Babar Azam- dnp
Aaron Finch- dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Travis Head - dnp
Jason Holder - dnp
Marnus Labuschagne- dnp
Mohammad Nabi - dnp
Ben Stokes - dnp
David Warner - dnp

Overall

Ben Stokes - 809
Martin Guptill - 781
Joe Root - 760
Virat Kohli - 700
Steve Smith - 662
Glenn Maxwell - 650
Marnus Labuschagne - 649
Mohammad Nabi - 590
Shubman Gill - 568
Aaron Finch - 558
Keshav Maharaj - 530
Rohit Sharma - 471
Travis Head - 458
David Warner - 392
Tom Banton - 327
Lewis Gregory - 281
Peter Handscomb - 239
Babar Azam - 116

Ben Stokes - The Best Cricketer of the Week

The Ben Stokes roadshow continues to run on as the controversy shrouded redhead bumps from moment to moment drawing headlines and match winning performances in equal measure. This week the casual observer of our fine sport would have noted Stokes for his profanity laden response to provocation from a bespectacled South African - however, as ever, there was much more to it than that. Stokes is developing a natural affinity to shelve whatever else is going on in his private life - be it biased media reports, family concerns or accolades - and win matches. The final Test in the South African series was another Stokes special. No pyrotechnics this time. 30 runs across both innings and a pair of pairs with the ball - but all round contributions from the Durham man. He scored points all around the disciplines - 22.73% with the bat, 59.09% with the ball and 18.18% in the field. Yet again he showed his ability to switch through the gears with his batting performance when needed. His second innings 28 from 24 balls was not Headingley-esque but hinted at the formula that Silverwood's England have been flirting with; a fully rounded Test team who can draw upon their experience in all formats of the game when the match calls for it - and who better to exemplify that ethos than Stokes? His list topping performance this week is his fourth overall but this is the first time that he has ever taken the top spot of the Overall List. He has a comfortable 160 point lead over Marnus Labuschagne. Stokes has six more games in South Africa whilst Labuschagne's Brisbane are now out of the BBL. A chance for Stokes to really force his agenda and his lead in 2020.

You can split the Australians in our list into two categories. One category is long in the tooth established veterans such as Messrs. Finch, Smith and Warner; the other is more peripheral figures who are hoping to force their way into the Australian cricketing fraternity for the next decade. Marnus Labuschagne has been leading this list having never been out of the top two since his debut in Week 2 - however there is another figure who has rather more quietly been impressing. Travis Head is in tenth position on the overall list but has finished third this week after taking top spot two weeks ago. He started the year poorly with just 10 runs in the last Test between Australia and New Zealand however scored 142 runs in the last Test in 2019. Whilst his international brethren were in India, Head stayed behind and put his efforts behind Adelaide's late BBL push - and was instrumental in his team losing just three of their last 8 games. You can also see how much Adelaide relied on their wicket keeper batsman. When Head failed they did too. But those failures did not happen too often; 8 against Brisbane and 5 against Melbourne Stars were his two lowest scores in this run of games with his next lowest being 22 against the Melbourne Renegades. Across the final eight games of the BBL season, Head averaged 28.5 - including the second game against Brisbane where he was not asked to bat thanks to the dominance of Phil Salt and Jake Weatherald. Despite this success Head has not been able to get any higher than ninth position on the overall List - a return to longer form cricket with South Australia in the Sheffield Shield may redress this.

Martin Guptill's high performance on our overall List cannot continue much longer can it? Every year we have been keeping track of the top Cricketers in the world there has always been an early front runner that flew out of the blocks and didn't seem to tire for months and months. In 2018 it was JP Duminy who was in the top five for the first three months before disappearing and finishing outside the top ten. Last year it was Shakib Al Hasan who refused to go away for a long period of time - despite how much we wanted him to when he brought the game into disrepute. This year it is Guptill. There has been a lot of opportunities for him to fade away but he keeps on moving back up the table. Guptill finished first in Week One before falling back to fourth in Week Two as the Super Smash competition came to an end. You would expect the veteran New Zealander to exploit the green bowling of Kiwi newbies in that particular competition but surely that's enough? He then got 213 in Week Three and moved back into third. But again....domestic cricket! Who cares? Next up for Guppy was India. He started with a sanguine 30 and back down to fifth again - "he's starting to be found out by world class bowlers" you may have thought. However he followed this up by two other scores in the thirties this week and finishes third for the week and is third overall yet again! What next for Guptill? Back to domestic cricket with Auckland and those green bowlers again. Can Guptill keep this up? I wouldn't put it past him.

Week

Ben Stokes - 220
Joe Root - 167
Travis Head- 139
Rohit Sharma - 133
Martin Guptill- 118
Aaron Finch - 113
Virat Kohli- 110
Mohammad Nabi- 88
Steve Smith - 54
Marnus Labuschagne - 48
Glenn Maxwell - 36
Tom Banton - 13
Peter Handscomb- 4

Kyle Abbott - dnp
Colin Ackermann- dnp
Babar Azam - dnp
Shubman Gill - dnp
Lewis Gregory - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Jason Holder- dnp
Keshav Maharaj- dnp
David Warner - dnp

Overall

Ben Stokes - 809
Marnus Labuschagne - 649
Martin Guptill - 628
Steve Smith - 601
Glenn Maxwell - 601
Mohammad Nabi - 590
Virat Kohli - 584
Joe Root - 572
Aaron Finch - 558
Travis Head - 458
David Warner - 392
Keshav Maharaj - 387
Rohit Sharma - 371
Tom Banton - 276
Peter Handscomb - 213
Lewis Gregory - 206
Shubman Gill - 191
Babar Azam - 116