Phil Salt - The Best Cricketer of the Week

 

Weekly Top 5

1. Phil Salt - 197 - If Salt played in the Carribean every week he might put on Lara like figures. He finishes in first place this week for the second time in 2024. He also moves up to 7th place overall; his highest position in 2 months. He has never been higher.

2. Jos Buttler - 2261 - 20 weeks out of cricket ended disappointingly for Buttler with a golden duck in his first innings. Made that up with 87 more runs in the other two games....fairly unevenly spread mind.

3. Daryl Mitchell - 149 - Not gargantuan figures for Mitchell on his return to domestic cricket; especially when you consider 40% of this came from his bowling figures from a meagre 14 overs. All the points count though.

4. Chamari Athapaththu - 142 - Not producing blistering performances in the WBBL but sheer weight of matches helps put her in a fairly low scoring Top 5 this week.

5. Glenn Maxwell - 84 - The runt of the Top 5 litter this week is Maxwell who scores 58 points fewer than fourth place. Is especially lucky to be here considering he scored a big fat zero in the final ODI against Pakistan.

Overall Top 5

1. Chamari Athapaththu - 4460 - With every passing week of WBBL action she puts herself further away from second place. Her gap is now up to 490. The only gap bigger is between Smith and Khawaja at the other end of the table.

2. James Vince - 3970 - About to enter his final week of inactivity before some rare T10 action. Is very well insulated in silver place; he has 490 above him and 424 below him.

3. Travis Head - 3546 - His fourth week inactive is his joint longest period of fallow time. Next week's fifth inactive week will be his last.

4. Sam Curran - 3406 - 71 points this week narrowed the gap on third place to 167 but that isn't nearly enough to broach a Top Three that is looking pretty untouchable with a month of the competition left.

5. Babar Azam - 3239 - Only 61 points this week but that makes the gap between him and Labuschagne very very very tight instead of just very very very very tight. 67 points separate.

Other Movers

A mere 27 points for Wellington in the Plunket Shield was enough to see Rachin Ravindra breach the Top 10 again.

Top Three Averages

1. Chamari Athapaththu - 171.54 (Down from 172.72)
2. Jos Buttler - 133 (Up from 131.5)
3. Ravindra Jadeja - 132.39.

For the first time in record two players have decreased by the same amount. Aaron Hardie & Rachin Ravindra are both down by 2.97 to 74.36 & 104.22 respectively. Phil Salt is up the most to breach the 100 point a week mark.

Highest scorer by Format

Long Form = Simon Harmer = 2235
One Day = Chamari Athapaththu = 946
Short Form = Chamari Athapaththu- 3514

Highest scorer by Discipline

*=New Name

Runs - James Vince - 2390
Batting Bonus - Travis Head = 380
Strike Rate - Travis Head & * Phil Salt = 790

Wickets - Simon Harmer = 1180
Wicket Bonus - Ravindra Jadeja = 250
Economy - Simon Harmer - 680

Fielding – James Vince = 490
Fielding Bonus - James Vince - 50

Weekly List in Full

Phil Salt 197
Jos Buttler 157
Daryl Mitchell 149
Chamari Athapaththu 142
Glenn Maxwell 84
Sam Curran 71
Babar Azam 61
Rachin Ravindra 27
Aaron Hardie 12

Simon Harmer dnp
James Vince dnp
Moeen Ali dnp
Travis Head dnp
Mitchell Marsh dnp
Harry Brook dnp
Ravindra Jadeja dnp
Shubman Gill dnp
Steve Smith dnp
Usman Khawaja dnp
Marnus Labuschagne dnp
Yashasvi Jaiswal dnp
Virat Kohli dnp

Overall List In Full

1 Chamari Athapaththu 4460
2 James Vince 3970
3 Travis Head 3546
4 Sam Curran 3406
5 Babar Azam 3239
6 Marnus Labuschagne 3172
7 Phil Salt 3053
8 Ravindra Jadeja 3045
9 Yashasvi Jaiswal 2981
10 Rachin Ravindra 2814
11 Simon Harmer 2808
12 Harry Brook 2780
13 Moeen Ali 2727
14 Glenn Maxwell 2383
15 Shubman Gill 2361
16 Jos Buttler 2261
17 Virat Kohli 2099
18 Daryl Mitchell 1937
19 Mitchell Marsh 1685
20 Aaron Hardie 1636
21 Steve Smith 1503
22 Usman Khawaja 998

Marnus Labuschagne - The Best Cricketer of the Week

 

Weekly Top 5

1. Marnus Labuschagne - 267 - Straight back after a year away and claims his twelfth Cricketer of the Year award. Could we be seeing the beginnings of a stellar year like he had in 2021?

2. Daryl Mitchell - 224 - Couldn't have asked for a better debut week on our List for a T20 player. Scores of 57 in the Super Smash for Canterbury and then 67 in national colours sees him finish with a score that would see you in top position most weeks.

3. Chamari Athapaththu - 214 - When she plays she will need to score big to stay up the top of the List and she is certainly fulfilling that brief so far. 3 games in the Women's Supers Smash this week with scores of 1, 25 and 58 plus two wickets.

=4. Babar Azam - 186 - Finishes in the Top 5 for the week but fourth does seem a little underwhelming from a Test and a T20. Without that T20 he would have finished even lower - with just 37% of his points coming from the red ball.

=4. James Vince - 186 - Two decent performances in BBL 13 puts James Vince near the top of the tree for the second week in a row. Scored a POTM 79 against Melbourne Stars before a more understated 27 against Sydney Thunder.

Overall Top 5

1. Chamari Athapaththu - 373 - Finished top last week and third this week so is good value for the overall lead. Nobody has ever finished top in the first three weeks in a row, can Chamari pull off that feat?

2. Marnus Labuschagne - 267 - Straight in at second for the Australia and Brisbane batter, with a Test match on the horizon you would suspect that his Top 5 position is well assured.

3. James Vince - 235 - Consistently OK performances in BBL 13 see him rise up the ranks to third in our overall placings. Needs to perform big in the remaining games as a period of time in the wilderness beckons.

4. Daryl Mitchell - 224 - Straight into the Top 5 for a player that is increasingly becoming Kane Williamson's heir apparent.

5. Glenn Maxwell - 213 - The only member of the overall Top 5 who did not feature in the weekly Top 5. Just 71 points this week and drops from second to fifth but the days are still early.

Ones To Watch

It is just outside the Top 10 where eyes are drawn with just 50 points between 10th place Jaiswal and 15th place Sam Curran.

Top 3 Average Points per Active Week

1. Chamari Athapaththu = 186.5
2. James Vince = 117.5
3. Glenn Maxwell = 106.5

Highest scorer by Format

* = New Name

Long Form = *Marnus Labuschagne = 202
One Day = n/a
Short Form = Chamari Athapaththu = 373

Highest scorer by Discipline

Runs - *Marnus Labuschagne = 167
Batting Bonus - * Marnus Labuschagne & * Daryll Mitchell = 40
Strike Rate - Glenn Maxwell = 80

Wickets - Chamari Athapaththu - 120
Wicket Bonus - Chamari Athapaththu - 20
Economy - Glenn Maxwell, *Travis Head, *Marnus Labuschagne and *Mitchell Marsh - 30

Fielding - *Shubmann Gill = 50
Fielding Bonus - Yashasvi Jaiswal & James Vince = 10

Weekly List In Full

Marnus Labuschagne 267
Daryl Mitchell 224
Chamari Athapaththu 214
Babar Azam 186
James Vince 186
Mitchell Marsh 124
Travis Head 80
Steve Smith 72
Glenn Maxwell 71
Usman Khawaja 61
Aaron Hardie 56
Sam Curran 46

Moeen Ali dnp
Harry Brook dnp
Jos Buttler dnp
Simon Harmer dnp
Rachin Ravindra dnp
Phil Salt dnp
Yashasvi Jaiswal dnp
Virat Kohli dnp
Shubman Gill dnp
Ravindra Jadeja dnp

Overall List In Full

1 Chamari Athapaththu 373
2 Marnus Labuschagne 267
3 James Vince 235
4 Daryl Mitchell 224
5 Glenn Maxwell 213
6 Babar Azam 186
7 Aaron Hardie 175
8 Mitchell Marsh 124
9 Shubman Gill 109
10 Yashasvi Jaiswal 98
11 Travis Head 80
12 Steve Smith 72
13 Virat Kohli 68
14 Usman Khawaja 61
15 Sam Curran 46
16 Ravindra Jadeja 0

Martin Guptill - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Martin Guptill is an unlikely star man for the first week of 2020. Picked in this list specifically because he has gone unselected in the major tournaments of the year - he has done just what you would expect of him in a third tier T20 competition and utterly dominated with the bat. He is now the captain of Auckland and played a captain's innings on New Year's Day with a score of 83* against Canterbury before following this up yesterday with 22 against Central Districts - both achieved with strike rates in the 100s. Guptill will not play as much in 2020 as he did in 2019 and he is nowhere near the talismanic player he was in his heyday - about 2015 - but at just over 33 he is nowhere near the scrap heap just yet. What can be guaranteed is that when he does play he will score big against unrecognised bowlers at an impressive strike rate. It is a formula that we have seen before. The fact that Guptill is at something of a loose end throughout the IPL and The Hundred may work to his advantage on our list. If one of your overseas players gets injured, Marty will be on the end of the phone. Until then he will be eyeing up T10 leagues and second and third tier T20 competitions such as the MSL, the Global T20 Canada completion and the much anticipated Euro T20 Slam. Are these halcyon days for Guptill? No. Might they be profitable days? Very possibly.

Another player who will play an awful lot of franchise cricket in 2020 is Mohammad Nabi. He debuts in our overall list in third position and will cover a lot of ground, use a lot of air miles and may very well rack up a fair few wickets and runs in 2020. Currently plying his trade for Rangpur in the BPL, the Afghanistan all rounder started his year with a wicket from each of his two games this week as well as modest scores of 5 and 23 with the bat. Nabi too has something Guptillian about him. This is exemplified by his last game of the week against Sylhet. The eastern Bangladesh franchise are bottom of the table with Nabi's Rangpur just a single place above them so Nabi will be disappointed with scoring just 23 runs off them - however he did so at a strike rate of 135.29, enough to score him the extra twenty points to see him overtake his team mate Lewis Gregory and take third place for the week. There is a slight long term issue for Nabi. Whilst Guptill is likely to feature for his national team in ODIs and T20s fairly soon - Afghanistan do not have any fixtures in the diary yet until the T20 World Cup until October! Although this is obviously not going to remain the case, there are no national games on the horizon for the number one ranked T20I and number two ODI all-rounder. He really will need to fill his boots in those franchise competitions.

You can't keep him away from the top of our Overall List. This is the first week since late February 2019 that Glenn Maxwell has not been in the box seat of our rankings - but he is not too far off the pace. His Nelson score this week sees him 54 points below Guptill and primed for another move up the table as the Big Bash rumbles on for another thousand games. His two performances for the Melbourne Stars this week underline what he brings to the table in these rankings. In the first game he was the effective bowler. The wickets of Alex Hales and Usman Khawaja are prime scalps for any established bowler...but The Big Show got 'em within his first two overs. He is proving a very effective surprise opening bowler - something we saw with Lancashire in the Royal London One Day Cup last year. Then came his second game - the Derby against the Melbourne Renegades. Here he was the batsmen extraordinaire with 40 off 32 balls to arrest a bit of a slide for his team and take them to a fifth win of the season and keep them at the top of the table. This form could see him start 2020 as he ended 2019. The dominant Cricketer in the world.

Week

Martin Guptill - 165
Glenn Maxwell - 111
Mohammad Nabi - 98
Lewis Gregory - 75
Aaron Finch - 64
Peter Handscomb - 34
Tom Banton - 15

Kyle Abbott - dnp
Colin Ackerman- dnp
Babar Azam - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Travis Head - dnp
Jason Holder - dnp
Virat Kohli - dnp
Marnus Labuschagne - dnp
Keshav Maharaj - dnp
Joe Root - dnp
Rohit Sharma- dnp
Steve Smith - dnp
Ben Stokes- dnp
David Warner - dnp

Overall

Martin Guptill - 165
Glenn Maxwell - 111
Mohammad Nabi - 98
Lewis Gregory - 75
Aaron Finch - 64
Peter Handscomb - 34
Tom Banton - 15

Virat Kohli - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Our list shows no bias. Batsmen are dealt with in the same way as bowlers. The Test favourite is on an equal playing field to the T20 mercenary. One thing that you can be sure of is that if you score two centuries in a week, you are going to be claiming top spot. Virat Kohli, this week's winner, has not claimed the title as many times as you would have thought. This is only his fifth time at the pinnacle of our list. Out of his previous four table-topping performances three have been whilst representing Bangalore. The other? Well, that was for a week where he scored two hundreds in two ODIs against West Indies. To pull off that feat once is a great achievement - to do so twice shows the man is a true ODI legend. As well as taking his inaugural Cricketer of the Week accolade for 2019, he also climbs into the overall top five for the first time this year - quite an achievement when you consider he has been inactive for 40% of gameweeks. He finds himself cheek by jowel with his old enemy from 2018. Joe Root is just in front of him in fourth place. The two captains spent all of 2018 in a dog fight - and with just 95 points between them we look set for a similar battle this time out. 

It was just a matter of time as to when Shakib Al Hasan would lose his overall top spot - and it has taken rather longer than many would have thought. Three weeks ago it seemed like Ben Stokes was going to overtake the Bangladesh captain but a subsequent dip in form and a break from the game left the field open for Glenn Maxwell. Last week he trailed Shakib by a solitary point but now has a lead of 150. Strangely enough a wicket was the way that Maxwell initially eased into top spot however he then followed that up with 51 runs for Australia in two ODIs against India. Again we have seen an extension of the rule I set out last week: If Maxwell scores big Australia win. Whilst the performances of Usman Khawaja and Aaron Finch would have caught the eye more, 47 off 31 balls for Maxwell continued to push the envelope for the Aussies in Friday's game. The stellar run of form that has seen Maxwell move up our overall table has also seen him move up the batting order for his national team. Starting this series at 7, he came in at first drop for yesterday's ODI. Perhaps an acknowledgment of his big hitting prowess. 

This week has seen two of our favourites hope to turn over a new leaf in 2019 by displaying something a little different to what we have seen from them thus far. Last year Rashid Khan's party trick was getting wickets in clusters and backing that up with explosive batting. So far we have seen him struggle to combine these facets of his game. Sometimes getting one, rarely getting two, oftentimes getting none. Even this week, where he got his highest score of the year and claimed second place on our weekly table, he picked up 50 economy points but just three wickets against the comparatively fragile batsmen of Ireland. Even his approach to batting seems markedly different. For someone whose ODI batting average is 99.86, to see Rashid grinding out 52 off 58 balls batting at number nine is odd to say the least. I have often speculated that Rashid is trying to adapt himself into something of an allrounder- perhaps he used this game to practice a new approach to his batting. Another player that showed us something different was Jeetan Patel. Last year's third place finisher has began the year out of sorts. Last week he was in the bottom five of all contributors and only finds himself one better this week despite getting 149 - by far his biggest total of the year. This is largely thanks to a stunning cameo of 20 off 11 balls with the bat - something almost unheard of from the Kiwi. Patel is usually a player associated with combining large hauls of wickets with economies regularly under 4. So far this year he is struggling with both. Against Canterbury he broke one of these hoodoos and managed to sort out his economy but we still await the Patel who can gut a batting order. Both Patel and Khan were in the mix all the way through 2018, if they keep up the form they have shown this week they could be working up the league in no time. 

Week 

Virat Kohli- 319
Rashid Khan - 210
Kuldeep Yadav- 183
Jonny Bairstow - 160
Glenn Maxwell - 151
Jeetan Patel - 149
Shreyas Iyer - 118
Joe Root - 105
Mohammad Abbas - 70
Callum Ferguson - 68
Abdur Razzak - 51
Joe Burns - 48
Shai Hope - 43
Rohit Sharma - 14


Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
Shubman Gill - dnp 
Simon Harmer - dnp 
Jack Leach- dnp 
Duanne Olivier - dnp 
Wayne Parnell - dnp 
Ben Stokes - dnp 
Kane Williamson - dnp 

Morne Morkel- ytp 

Overall 

Glenn Maxwell - 1321
Shakib Al Hasan - 1171
Ben Stokes - 1160
Joe Root- 1098
Virat Kohli- 1003
Shreyas Iyer - 983
Rashid Khan - 979
Kane Williamson - 971
Kuldeep Yadav - 811
Duanne Olivier - 793
Jos Buttler - 760
Jonny Bairstow - 759
Rohit Sharma - 753
Callum Ferguson - 671
Joe Burns - 604
Simon Harmer - 500
Shai Hope - 465
Jeetan Patel - 446
Shubman Gill - 340
Mohammad Abbas - 331
Abdur Razzak- 178
Wayne Parnell - 148
Jack Leach - 65

Morne Morkel - ytp