Jason Holder - The Best Cricketer of the Week

How fitting it is that the man who had the most to lose in the West Indies' tour of England ends with Cricketer of the Week. Holder did not need to be as receptive as he was to call to arms from his board. A smattering of high profile West Indian names opted out. If he had joined them it would have been a fait accompli for the series and, one feels, for his board. But he made the right choice and has got his reward. His weekly haul of 178 is the 6th lowest since the readjustment of our points system at the start of 2019. Despite this you feel like he was rather due his second Cricketer of the Week title. At the end of the First Test, Holder had 259 points for, what transpired to be, his best performance of the series. It was only the indomitable Ben Stokes that stopped the Barbadian from getting top spot. Because we are living in an age of precious little cricket some very low scores topping our weekly lists. Three of our lowest scores have all come in the Corona era and Holder slides in at 6th lowest. This is not to denigrate his achievements. His form in the Third Test was much improved on the Second. His 68 second innings runs offered the Windies a sliver of hope - however it was merely a sliver. Personally, Holder has shot up the table during this series - the steepest part of his climb was this week. The final week before lockdown saw Holder move off bottom spot for the first time since his debut. From there he progressed slowly and steadily up to his current spot in 6th. This week he overtook Marnus Labuschagne, Aaron Finch, Travis Head and (more impressively) Babar Azam. There is now two weeks of inactivity for Holder before the beginning of the CPL. With Azam the next man to face Stokes and Joe Root, he is unlikely to stay there for much longer. When he does play again he will be jostling for a top five place again - it all depends on how much ground is lost in that time.

It was a week of reversed fortune for Stokes and Root. Stokes, who has been so monumental since the cessation of cricket, got a mere 20 points. On the other side of the coin, Root, who looked under baked in the Second Test got the third highest score of the Week. This saw the Yorkshireman jump two places on the list to make it an English one-two at the top of the list. I often criticise Root for a lack of consistency in his performances. The allegation I lay at his door is that he disappears in big games. But how dependable are our Englishmen? Over the last three years we have had eight English players in our Lists. Root has been with us for all three years whilst Stokes is midway through his second year. Jos Buttler had two complete years and Jofra Archer, Jack Leach and Jonny Bairstow had one year. The fairest way to judge their reliability is their average points scored per active week. When the numbers are crunched Joe Root sits just above average with 142.14 points per weeks played. Just as in this year's overall list, he trails Ben Stokes (178.75) with Jofra Archer in second (157). There are caveats galore to these figures. Stokes had a season in the IPL whilst Archer was on our List before he was a Test player meaning he could play the T20 circuit. What it does show is that Root is comfortably comfortable. He'll score what you expect of him about a third of the time, over exceed about a third of the time and fail over a third of the time. He's even Mr Dependable in terms of Cricketers of The Week: one in 2018, two in 2019, one this year. Ploughing away in a typically English manner. Below Root sits Jack Leach averaging 123.71 points per active week. In fifth and sixth are Jonny Bairstow with 119.8 and Jos Buttler 117.83. To be worth your place in this list, and in a team, averaging three figures every week is the expectation. We then turn to the two gentlemen who, thus far, average below that.


It is a double edged sword for Banton and Gregory that they are ton the cusp of the set up when cricket is at such a premium. They are being forced into the limelight at a time when they are rusty. If they do fail, there are fewer avenues for them to get their eye in. The other side of the coin is that if you play your cards right you can get a debut ahead of more established players and throw your hat in the ring. Banton has played his cards wrong and his hat is very much on his head. The Somerset wunderkind got the second highest points this week. This sounds decent until you consider he batted five times in four games of cricket. Such is the desperation for Banton to do well that, on getting out for a duck for Team Moeen he was allowed to bat again for the 'opposition'. He then preceded to get 3. Banton has only had 11 active weeks of cricket this year but averages a mere 69.91 per week. If you remove this busy week from the reckoning, it is an even more dire average of 60.3 - just under half Jonny Bairstow's average. With the final ODI v Ireland tomorrow, Banton needs to get a score orhe could be discarded. Despite his general lack of form, his busy diary has boosted him up a fair few places this week. He overleaps Shubman Gill, Mohammad Nabi and Glenn Maxwell into 14th.

Week

Jason Holder - 178
Tom Banton - 166
Joe Root- 155
Lewis Gregory - 119
Babar Azam - 57
Ben Stokes - 20



Kyle Abbott - dnp
Colin Ackermann - dnp
Aaron Finch - dnp
Shubman Gill - 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
Rohit Sharma- dnp
Steve Smith - dnp
David Warner - dnp

Overall

Ben Stokes - 2105
Joe Root - 1314
Martin Guptill - 1243
Keshav Maharaj - 1176
Steve Smith - 1109
Jason Holder- 1069
Babar Azam - 1061
Marnus Labuschagne - 1000
Aaron Finch - 980
Lewis Gregory - 938
Travis Head - 901
David Warner - 821
Virat Kohli - 787
Tom Banton - 769
Shubman Gill - 752
Mohammad Nabi - 701
Glenn Maxwell - 650
Rohit Sharma - 471
Peter Handscomb - 383