Simon Harmer - The Best Cricketer of the Week

We could wax lyrical for ten thousand words about the skills of Simon Harmer and it would still not do him justice. For a record stretching eighteenth week the South African claims the Cricketer of the Week honours - and does so playing considerably fewer games than most others on the list. With the return of T20 cricket and the fact that I held back this post until the end of the Test match, we have seen much more cricket played over the course of the last week. Simon Harmer is just one of three players to have played just one four day game in that time. The other two were Tom Banton and Lewis Gregory who scored 304 and 123 fewer points than he did. We will hear more from them later. Yet again Harmer delivered a 360 degree bowling and fielding performance with a full allocation of sixty points for economy and a bonus of  fifty points from catches in the field. Harmer has really put himself back in the mix in this truncated Summer. His 327 points sees him jump from 16th place to 8th - a nosebleed inducing ascent. This all does come with a slight caveat. Despite his individual success, weather has conspired against Essex this week meaning their game against Hampshire was a draw. This not only stopped Harmer from achieving even more but potentially sees them having to fight to reach the final of the Bob Willis Trophy. Harmer may just have one more four day match left this year! On top of this, Essex are now heading into the T20 Blast. The upside of this is a barrage of more frequent games but the downside is that Harmer does less well in the shorter format. This may seem anomalous when you consider that his previous high score before last week's 14 wicket haul came in that memorable T20 finals weekend - however this is very much the outlier. In the group stages both Essex and Harmer looked distinctly average and the South African carried this (lack of form) into the Msanzi Super League. If he looks over his shoulder he sees the likes of Steve Smith, Marnus Labuschagne and Aaron Finch just starting their Summers. Could we potentially see Harmer outside the top ten? It will make 2020 an even weirder year than it already is. 

Harmer is not the only player that has soared up the Overall List this week. Mohammad Nabi has moved up seven places thanks to four games for St Lucia whilst Jason Holder moves into third place overall for the same amount of game for Barbados. Whilst Hilder has grabbed the headlines slightly more with some big hitting innings, it is Nabi who leads him out in terms of points scored this week. The reason for this is largely consistency in bowling. Holder only got 30 points for economy across all four games. This pales in comparison to Nabi who got 60 across just three games. Such is Nabi's consistency that over the last three games he has got figures of 4.75 and then 4.25 twice. Another area where Nabi has contributed in the field where he has had a catch in each of his four matches. With the bat in hand, however, Holder is in control. Whilst he only has 11 more runs than his Afghan compatriot, his strike rates are through the roof - most notably in his 27 off 12 balls against Nabi's St Lucia. There are still plenty more games in this competition and it will be very interesting to see how these two all rounders measure up when the tournament is done and dusted. 

What of Tom Banton and Lewis Gregory who we mentioned earlier? They were the pair who, like Simon Harmer, only played a solitary Bob Willis Trophy match before being called up on ODI duty. The fates of the two cidermen have been pretty divergent in that time. Returning from injury to face Warwickshire, Gregory performed tidily. Match figures of 5-80 with a pretty economy has seen him move up to seventh place - his highest position since week 2 where everything is a bit fuzzy anyway. Seventh place, ahead of the likes of Steve Smith and Virat Kohli, is very flattering for Gregory. In a normal year it would seem very unlikely that he would hold such an exalted position - however if he played as he did last week he wouldn't be far off. On the other side of the coin, his teammate Banton had another torrid week with the bat. Last week he got 18 and 2 against Northamptonshire and got the lowest points of any active player on the list. This week he got 13 against Warwickshire and ended with the lowest points of any active player on the list. Since lockdown eased Banton has played nine innings in all formats of the game - he has scored over 50 in two of those innings and under 18 in the other seven. This is not good enough from England's wunderkind. Barton's lack of progress is rather splendidly symbolised in the list. He is the only player to have scored points since lockdown and moved backwards in the table - moving from 12th to 13th. Banton needs to redress his issues quicksharp.  

 Week

Simon Harmer - 337

Mohammad Nabi- 300 

Jason Holder - 271

Colin Ackermann- 264

Lewis Gregory - 204

Joe Root-  109

Babar Azam - 94

Tom Banton - 23

Kyle Abbott - dnp 

Aaron Finch - dnp 

Shubman Gill - dnp 

Martin Guptill- dnp 

Peter Handscomb - dnp 

Virat Kohli- dnp 

Marnus Labuschagne- dnp 

Keshav Maharaj- dnp 

Glenn Maxwell - dnp 

Rohit Sharma- dnp 

Steve Smith - dnp 

Ben Stokes - dnp

David Warner - dnp 

Overall 

Ben Stokes - 2204

Joe Root - 1548

Jason Holder- 1340

Babar Azam - 1300

Martin Guptill - 1243

Keshav Maharaj - 1176

Lewis Gregory - 1142

Simon Harmer - 1044

Steve Smith - 1109

Mohammad Nabi - 1001

Marnus Labuschagne - 1000

Aaron Finch - 980

Tom Banton - 910

Travis Head - 901

David Warner - 821

Virat Kohli - 787

Shubman Gill - 752

Colin Ackermann  -685

Glenn Maxwell - 650

Rohit Sharma - 471

Peter Handscomb - 383