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