Next to death and taxes in the list of unavoidable things is huge hauls of wickets from Simon Harmer. And when I say huge I mean HUGE. In the second round of the Bob Willis Trophy, Harmer took 14 wickets. This is the third time he has done this in his four years as an Essex player. What is more he did it with an abductor strain that was meant to rule him out for three weeks. The man is a machine- and is also an ever present contender on our list. Except for the fact that he has not been present since his disappointing Mzansi Super League last November. The Surrey game shows he is more than ready to surge back into action though. And surge he has. His 453 points is the fifth highest weekly total since we refurbished the point scoring system at the start of 2019. It is also the second highest score of the year after Stokes' Second Test heroics against the West Indies. It has seen Harmer overtake, not only Colin Ackermann, but also Rohit Sharma, Glenn Maxwell and Mohammed Nabi on the Overall List. To put this into context, in two weeks he has scored more points than:
Rohit Sharma's 4 active weeks in Australia and New Zealand.
Glenn Maxwell's 6 active weeks for the back half of the BBL.
Mohammad Nabi's 7 active weeks for the BBL and the series against Ireland.
And that doesn't even sound surprising. Harmer is a legend in these lists and this Cricketer of the Week accolade takes him to 16. That is double the amount of second placed Rashid Khan. What odds that he will extend that even further by the time the English 'summer' is out?
We had an absolute thriller at Old Trafford and then have been let down by the weather at the Ageas Bowl. One of the things that the precipitation has robbed us of is another sight of Babar Azam at his best. In the first innings he looked good for his 47 runs....but has he been able to show off his potential as one of the big boys in world cricket? I'd argue not yet. As we stand, he has been the most influential of the three players to feature in the series. Due to Ben Stokes' withdrawal from the rest of the series, he comes to rest on 99 for the series. Whilst this is a disappointment, his score of 2204 for the year is 765 points clear of second place. Stokes is likely to be untouchable for the foreseeable. That leaves us with Joe Root as the only rival to the Lahore born player. With a Test left in the series, Azam has 26 more points than Root . The England captain's score of 9 was very much hampered by the weather this week and we know he has more in his tank. He still has the overall beating of Azam as he sits in second place - 227 clear of the Pakistani. Azam's score of 47 points this week was enough to see him move up another place and overtake Keshav Maharaj into fourth place. Next up for him is Martin Guptill. Just 31 points stands between the two batsmen. You'd imagine that Azam will easily slide in behind Stokes and Root before the end of the Test series.
As I calculate these score, it is normal to see two players vying for Cricketer of the Week - however of late the gulfs have been huge. Pre-lockdown it would be very rare to see a gap of more than 100 between first and second place. On average it has happened one in every ten weeks, with an average gap of 52.5 since we changed the scoring rules in 2019. Since the return to cricket we have seen it happen four times in seven weeks. There was a 152 points gap between Jason Holder and Babar Azam, a 117 point divide between Stokes and Holder the next week and a massive 334 point gap between Stokes and Azam. This week the gap between Harmer and Ackermann is a huge 369 - the highest we have seen since the points update. Of course, this is down the fact that there a fewer Cricketers competing in fewer places. All five of our active players were playing in England. England is wet. If there is one player who can avoid a downpour they will steak away. Usually, however, their will be a Southern Hemisphere Cricketer to challenge them and balance out their streak. But not of late. This is going to change soon as we are starting to have the promise of more cricket round the corner. The CPL begins today with more points on the cards for Holder and Mohammad Nabi. Our first full of Aussies have released their itinerary for a busy late (or early for them) Summer of cricket. New Zealand have announced that the West Indies, Pakistan, Australia and Bangladesh will all visit their little haven over their Summer. More competitions means more competition. And that's what we all want. It's hard to predict but we will be up to 8 players participating next week. And it will only improve from there.
Week
Simon Harmer - 453
Colin Ackermann- 84
Babar Azam - 47
Tom Banton - 20
Joe Root- 9
Kyle Abbott - dnp
Aaron Finch - dnp
Shubman Gill - dnp
Lewis Gregory - dnp
Martin Guptill- dnp
Peter Handscomb - dnp
Jason Holder - dnp
Virat Kohli- dnp
Marnus Labuschagne- dnp
Keshav Maharaj- dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Mohammad Nabi- dnp
Rohit Sharma- dnp
Steve Smith - dnp
Ben Stokes - dnp
David Warner - dnp
Overall
Ben Stokes - 2204
Joe Root - 1439
Martin Guptill - 1243
Babar Azam - 1212
Keshav Maharaj - 1176
Steve Smith - 1109
Jason Holder- 1069
Marnus Labuschagne - 1000
Aaron Finch - 980
Lewis Gregory - 938
Travis Head - 901
Tom Banton - 887
David Warner - 821
Virat Kohli - 787
Shubman Gill - 752
Simon Harmer - 702
Mohammad Nabi - 701
Glenn Maxwell - 650
Rohit Sharma - 471
Colin Ackermann -421
Peter Handscomb - 383
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