Jason Holder - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Not much cricket played this week.....and even less of it in the coming months. As the world of cricket is threatened with total blackout, two players moved their way up the list. The one who did so from the lowliest position was Jason Holder who began the week at the bottom of the list and was 158 points away from Peter Handscomb. He used a return to domestic cricket and a game for Barbados against Guyana as a way of revolutionising his year.....just before it took a long sabbatical. At the start of the week the West Indies Championship was one of a mere handful of competitions who were still in business and mid way through this game it was announced that after this round of fixtures the season would grind to a halt. Holder's Barbados team are already likely winners of the season but his return to the side and haul of five wickets and 33 runs gave him 223 points for the week. Such has been the poor form for the West Indian captain, that these 223 points reflected just two points fewer than he has got in the year so far. One thing that has been holding Holder back is a lack of cricket - something that he is going to have to get used to going forward. He has played just 5 fifty over games this year, two against a Sri Lanka composite teams and a further three ODIs against Sri Lanka. However he underperformed in all of these with his best performance coming in the final ODI where he got 2-68 and 8 runs. The fact that he clawed himself off rock bottom and gained his first Cricketer of the Week was a pleasing end to this chapter of the year.

The PSL was the only competition that nailed it's colours to the mast this time last week and stated that it was going to soldier on. And it did so.....for a bit. It was devoid of a majority of its foreign talent as the likes of Tom Banton and Lewis Gregory returned home before it was finally put out of its misery mid way through the week. It did allow time for Babar Azam to put on two more average looking performances and continue his ascent up the table. The Pakistan limited overs captain has made progress in five of the last six weeks and and gone from 18th place at the start of the PSL to split the difference and finish the competition in ninth place - overtaking David Warner with scores of 19 and 32 in the dying embers of the competition. Without blowing the competition away, Azam ends up as the top run scorer in the PSL and has the highest average of 52.16. He will be a very intimidating prospect when (or if) the T20 World Cup roles around. For now, however, he will keep his low top ten position until cricket is resumed.

The world has been rocked by the Coronavirus pandemic and to focus on the world of sports seems myopic and rather selfish. For many of us sport is the ever present thread that runs through our lives. The narratives, the speculation, the anticipation and the grandeur of sport is the focus for the way many of us live our lives. Yes, there are larger things and that is the case now more than ever; however for many of us it is a bitter blow that now, in our hour of need, we have also been stripped of one of the core facets of what makes us us. To quarrel or gripe about when Cricket returns is natural but also pointlessly unhelpful. It will return when it can. It knows it is needed and will return when it can in some form. There are swirling vespers of rumours that the IPL may still go ahead in some form - however these were wafted away by the announcement by the ECB that there would be no cricket in England until the 28th of May. Just like the rest of what we have taken for granted for so long, when cricket will return it will not be in the form we expected. But we will be here waiting for it and we will count points once more. Until then we must stay safe, be kind and look after each other.

Week

Jason Holder - 223
Babar Azam - 71

Kyle Abbott - dnp
Colin Ackermann - dnp
Tom Banton - dnp
Aaron Finch - dnp
Shubman Gill - dnp
Lewis Gregory - dnp
Martin Guptill- dnp
Peter Handscomb - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Virat Kohli- dnp
Marnus Labuschagne- dnp
Keshav Maharaj- dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Mohammad Nabi- dnp
Joe Root- dnp
Rohit Sharma- dnp
Steve Smith - dnp
Ben Stokes - dnp
David Warner - dnp

Overall

Martin Guptill - 1243
Keshav Maharaj - 1176
Ben Stokes - 1128
Joe Root - 1109
Steve Smith - 1109
Marnus Labuschagne - 1000
Aaron Finch - 980
Travis Head - 901
Babar Azam - 874
David Warner - 821
Virat Kohli - 787
Lewis Gregory - 759
Shubman Gill - 752
Mohammad Nabi - 701
Glenn Maxwell - 650
Tom Banton - 603
Rohit Sharma - 471
Jason Holder- 448
Peter Handscomb - 383

Joe Root - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Things in the world of cricket (and the world of the world) have taken a turn for the dystopian in the last 48 hours - but, blissfully unaware of what was to come, our list of Cricketers were as active as they have ever been in 2020. They were pehapa making up for the paucity of cricket we may see for as long a month - this could have a huge bearing on our list for the year. One player who has benefited from the Corona cancellation of cricket is Joe Root. It has long been established that Joe Root absolutely bloody loves a pre series warm up match; an opportunity to annihilate green bowlers and show what he can do with the ball against green batsmen. This time round he has had the opportunity to do the pre-tour warm-up part without having the inconvenience of the actual tour part. In his two matches this week against a Sri Lanka Cricket XI and a Sri Lanka Board President's XI he scored a combined 180 runs - and that was with the latter match curtailed to allow England to hot foot it home. The 280 points accrued this week was Root's highest total for the week since the tour of New Zealand and his last Cricketer of the Week accolade in December last year. It sees him move his way back into the top five - joint in fourth place with Steve Smith. Nobody knows when Root may play again - it could very well be the University game against Leeds Bradford MCCU on the 2nd of April - or it could be in the burnt out wreckage of a church against a rampaging pack of motorbike riding ruffians from the nearest village for the prize of drinking water and a four pack of Andrex. In more frivolous news Root becomes the first cricketer to win Cricketer of the Week in all three years we have been doing this.

Lower down the table there were big lurches of points for two Australians - one playing domestically and another internationally. Marnus Labuschagne's position on the overall list has been going up and down like the supply of dried pasta over the last few months. Debuting in first position, he spent January in first or second before plummeting to the bottom of the top ten throughout February. Last week saw him down to tenth - his lowest position of the year. He then proceeded to score a century against South Africa and a half century against New Zealand to score 264 points, finish second for the week and move up to 6th place for the year. Labuschagne will be annoyed that the series against New Zealand went from being an affair to be played behind closed doors to cancelled as he was genuinely cementing his place in a very competitive middle order for Australia. He is now second to Ian Chappell for most runs for Australia after 6 ODIs. Another player that did well this week was a player that Labuschagne is gradually freezing out of the international scene - Travis Head. Head has been lurching up the table playing Sheffield Shield cricket and put on a truly exceptional all round performance for South Australia against Victoria this week comprising 76 runs, a wicket and four contributions in the field. His yield of 220 points sees him move into the top ten for the year. Unlike a lot of other players in this list, there is a very real possibility that these two players may feature next week....against each other. As I write there is to be no impact on the final round of Sheffield Shield fixtures and with South Australia playing Queensland it might be very interesting to see these two matched up against each other.

Another player who will be hoping to take advantage of the cessation of other forms of cricket is Babar Azam who this week moved up for the fourth week out of the last five to find himself creep into the top ten. The rest of the PSL is to be played behind closed doors and, as yet, there is no official cancellation or postponement of the Pakistan v Bangladesh ODI series. Azam has been off the pace for a while but is starting to get in a more recognisable vein of form - averaging 59 in his last three PSL games and easing past Ben Dunk to become the top scorer in the tournament with 294. Karachi are now second and are likely to progress to the knock out stages of the competition so further point for Azam seem likely - and if you look further up the table he could really do a job on some of those inactive players. A wall of Australian players stand between him and the top 5, with David Warner 18 points away in 9th and Smith 306 points away in joint fourth. If Azam makes hay while the sun is clouded over in a pestilential smog he could manage to leap up the table once more.

Week

Joe Root - 280
Marnus Labuschagne- 260
Travis Head - 220
Babar Azam - 187
Aaron Finch - 112
Mohammad Nabi- 101
David Warner - 101
Ben Stokes - 66
Tom Banton - 50
Martin Guptill- 50
Steve Smith - 44
Peter Handscomb- 36
Keshav Maharaj- 20
Lewis Gregory - 18

Kyle Abbot - dnp
Colin Ackermann- dnp
Shubman Gill - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Jason Holder - dnp
Virat Kohli - dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Rohit Sharma- dnp

Overall

Martin Guptill - 1243
Keshav Maharaj - 1176
Ben Stokes - 1128
Joe Root - 1109
Steve Smith - 1109
Marnus Labuschagne - 1000
Aaron Finch - 980
Travis Head - 901
David Warner - 821
Babar Azam - 803
Virat Kohli - 787
Lewis Gregory - 759
Shubman Gill - 752
Mohammad Nabi - 701
Glenn Maxwell - 650
Tom Banton - 603
Rohit Sharma - 471
Peter Handscomb - 383
Jason Holder- 225

Babar Azam - The Best Cricketer of the Week

He has seemingly been off the boil all year; however Babar Adam's PSL outings for Karachi have been enough to see him claim his inaugural Cricketer of the Week award. Despite this accolade, he still languishes a long way off the pace in a distant fourteenth place - which marks his highest position thus far in 2020. Azam has always been at a disadvantage in our overall list as he was inactive for the majority of January and February - featuring only once before the start of the PSL. He is trying to redress this now and averages 125 points a week since the start of the tournament. In terms of his batting performances there has been an element of inconsistency. He began the campaign with a score of 78 against Peshawar and in the reverse fixture this week nearly matched it with a score of 70. In between those two matches he averages just 13. Those are not the innings of a player who is crying out to break into the top ten. When Azam is firing on all cylinders he is a phenomenon - but we really have not seen that so far in 2020. Karachi are scheduled at least four more games in the PSL and, with the competition so close, may very well have a few more. If the version of Babar that thrives against Peshawar comes out to play, the young Pakistan legend in the making could still finish the tournament as a genuine contender.

The Australian trio have continued to use the South African series as way of boosting their overall points and their position in the table. This has been a genuinely entertaining series where both teams have been very much equals - however this has not manifested itself in the points gained over the week. Our only South African national to feature in this series, Keshav Maharaj, broke his four week spell of progression up the overall list, got his lowest score of any active week in 2020 and lost his top spot. In comparison; Steve Smith finished second in terms of points for the week, Aaron Finch moved into the top five at the expense of Joe Root and David Warner moves up a further two places to eleventh spot - just 16 points away from the top ten. These three Australian players are taking the Joe Root route to success this year. In both 2019 and so far in 2020, Joe Root quietly accumulates fairly average scores fairly regularly. He never destroys the opposition but manages to finish in the top five. Neither Smith nor Finch have won Cricketer of the Week so far this year however between them they have finished in the weekly top 5 thrice and four times respectively with Warner joining them on four occasions and winning Cricketer of the Week last week. This week they all finished above the 100 point threshold that marks a good week - a rare occurrence for three players all from the same team. Whether you are looking at our lists or just at the world of cricket in general; Australia are an unavoidably dominant spell once more.

Lewis Gregory is another player who is quietly accruing large amounts of points. This week he has equalled Maharaj's record of four weeks in a row of progression up the overall table. Where Maharaj's run took him from 11th place to first through the acquisition of 564 points, Gregory's four week total of 275 has seem him slowly plod from thirteenth four weeks ago, up one to twelfth the following week, a further one place last week and a jump of two places into the top ten this week. Azam-like, Gregory burst onto the scene at the start of his PSL campaign with an all round effort against Lahore that single handedly won him his first Cricketer of the Week award. Since then he has got a sum total of 0 wickets and two average T20 scores of 25 and 19 . Slow and steady are not adjectives you would usually associate with a player who was forged in the white hot fire of white ball cricket but that is the route that Gregory has taken to get into the top ten. However he is capable of so much more. His innings of 19* against Quetta on Thursday was off just 8 balls. If he had scored just one more run he could have picked up a further 40 points; bringing him up to 3rd for the week and overtaking Shubman Gill in eight position overall. Shoulda, woulda coulda....but such bursts, complimented by slow gradual accumulation could pave the way for Gregory to be something of a surprise contender on the overall list this year.

Week

Babar Azam- 130
Steve Smith - 119
Martin Guptill- 111
Aaron Finch- 109
David Warner - 100
Lewis Gregory - 74
Keshav Maharaj - 62
Jason Holder - 58
Marnus Labuschagne-51
Virat Kohli- 27
Tom Banton- 10
Mohammad Nabi- 10

Kyle Abbott - dnp
Colin Ackermann- dnp
Shubman Gill - dnp
Peter Handscomb- dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Travis Head - dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Joe Root - dnp
Rohit Sharma - dnp
Ben Stokes - dnp

Overall

Martin Guptill - 1193
Keshav Maharaj - 1156
Ben Stokes - 1062
Steve Smith - 965
Aaron Finch - 868
Joe Root - 829
Virat Kohli - 787
Shubman Gill - 752
Lewis Gregory - 741
Marnus Labuschagne - 736
David Warner - 720
Travis Head - 681
Glenn Maxwell - 650
Babar Azam - 616
Mohammad Nabi - 600
Tom Banton - 553
Rohit Sharma - 471
Peter Handscomb - 347
Jason Holder- 225