Keshav Maharaj - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Besides the ever growing gap between Stokes and the chasing field, the top five has shifted Week to Week over the first couple of months of 2020. Stokes has now been number one on the overall list for four weeks. In his first week at top spot he had a huge lead on second place Marnus Labuschagne, in Week two and three Martin Guptill was pushing him for top spot and this week a player has come out of nowhere to challenge the England all-rounder. Keshav Maharaj is a known prospect to Stokes - and in their most recent on-field battle the South African was rather found out - however Maharaj looks something of an unstoppable force in the Momentum One Day Cup. This week he jumped from 6th place to second off the back of a solitary game where the Dolphins player bagged a half century and a Fourier against the Cape Cobras - a handy 200 points to see him surge up the table once again. At the start of February, Maharaj was in 12th position but three weeks of improvement up the table have seen him rise to 148 points of the top spot. So far in this tournament he has taken 11 wickets in 5 matches, second only to Thando Ntini who has just one more despite playing two more games. He is also coupling this with an average of over 50 with the bat. Maharaj really isn't playing games this year and is following in the footsteps of Glenn Maxwell who got to top spot last year with impressive all round performance. Stokes will not play for England again for four weeks and in that time Maharaj's Dolphins will have played at least three times. It is a very real possibility that the South African could take top spot as soon as next week - or could he be the third challenger to fade away in the style of Guptill and Labuschagne?

Now we have seen a return to long form cricket in Australia, we have seen some of our less prolific Aussies come to the fore again. The highest score from an Australian this week did not come from their T20 mauling of South Africa but instead from the more prosaic match up between South and Western Australia. Travis Head has had a mixed year; after a huge score at the back end of 2019 his performances have been variable in 2020. Never higher than 9th on the overall list, he slid as far down the league as 14th last week before 95 runs split across two innings against Western Australia saw him acquire 105 points for the week and finish fifth on the weekly list. This could easily have been at least 20 points more if he had inched over the half century threshold at least once - falling short by four runs in the first innings and a solitary run in the second. Unlucky possibly but luck has certainly been on his side already this year. This week's score is not his highest for 2020 as Head won Cricketer of the Week in Week 5 for four games in the BBL - edging out Matin Guptill thanks to sheer weight of games played. Where he gained points that week he has potentially lost some this. What is impressive is the versatility of Head; finishing in the top five for the Week twice - once for T20 cricket and once for the longest form. There is a belief that he is the sort of player that could plug a gap in the middle order of Australia's ODI side - if that comes to pass he could be a top ten prospect very easily.

Due to this being a T20 World Cup year, our list has had more of a short form focus this year than in previous. This has seen far greater number of bodies turning out for PSL franchises than we have ever had before. Peshawar is likely to be our principle focus over the next month or so as both Tom Banton and Lewis Gregory are turning out for the North-Western Pakistan franchise, however this week Banton scored a mere 13 runs and an injury picked up with the England Lions has stopped Gregory from making his debut. Instead our focus is on one of Pakistan's favourite sons, Babar Azam. Due to lack of game time Azam has been propping up the table and even his century against Bangladesh only saw him jump up a solitary spot. He will be hoping to use the PSL as a spring board up the table and has started the competition brightly with 78 for Karachi against Peshawar. This has seen him gain another place on the overall list. As it stands he is in 16th place, with a disappointing looking Tom Banton 5 points ahead of him and an inactive Rohit Sharma 64 points ahead. Another couple of decent performances will catapult Azam closer to where he should be - a firm top ten prospect.

Week

Keshav Maharaj- 200
Babar Azam - 118
Jason Holder - 112
Ben Stokes- 112
Travis Head - 105
Lewis Gregory - 85
Aaron Finch - 82
Peter Handscomb-71
Steve Smith- 65
Marnus Labuschagne- 36
Tom Banton - 23
David Warner - 14
Shubman Gill - 8
Martin Guptill- 0
Virat Kohli - 0

Kyle Abbott - dnp
Colin Ackermann - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Mohammad Nabi- dnp
Joe Root - dnp
Rohit Sharma - dnp

Overall

Ben Stokes - 1062
Keshav Maharaj - 914
Martin Guptill - 887
Joe Root - 829
Shubman Gill - 752
Virat Kohli - 729
Steve Smith - 727
Marnus Labuschagne - 685
Glenn Maxwell - 650
Aaron Finch - 640
Mohammad Nabi - 590
Travis Head - 563
Lewis Gregory - 551
Rohit Sharma - 471
Tom Banton - 412
Babar Azam - 407
David Warner - 406
Peter Handscomb - 310
Jason Holder- 112

Simon Harmer - The Best Cricketer of the Week

I am an unashamed fan of Simon Harmer. For a man to perform so consistently week in week out, in whatever competition he participates in is something worthy of credit. He has had another stellar week with 9 wickets in his game against Cape Cobras. He has coupled this with thirty points for runs scored and ten points for his strike rate - something that has been happening ever more regularly for the South African. Another string to his already fairly string heavy bow. His 290 this week is enough to see him take first place for the week and return to his place at the top of the tree in the overall league. This is something that we became familiar with in 2018 - with Harmer leading the pack for the last third of the year - but could this be a sign that Harmer may potentially outstrip last year's success? This time last year, Harmer had 351 points - this year he has 130 more than that. Furthermore it wasn't until the English Summer and his exploits in the County Championship that we saw him reach the pinnacle of the overall table. But yet here he is in top spot in just Week three. Could Harmer's 2019 total outstrip his 8426 points of last year? 

I'm not the first to say that Joe Root always performs better in Tour matches than he does in the Test matches but that has been brought into sharp focus with his point scoring this week. 237 points from the warm up game against the West Indies President's XI is a good yield - especially when you take into consideration that, unlike his other England team mates on the list, he only played in one of the two fixtures. Another eyebrow raising figure is the three wickets that he took to claim him 60 points from just his bowling. This is a pattern we saw last year and is a situation that Joe Root exploits much more than any other player on our list. If we compare the feast that Root indulged in against the West Indies' side and compare it to the rest of the England players we see that he did disproportionately better than Ben Stokes and leagues better than Jack Leach and Jos Buttler - all three of whom played both matches. So what does this say about Root? That he doesn't drop his focus regardless of the opposition? That he cares more about these tour matches? That he feels he will be unduly criticised if he were to not succeed? One thing that is clear is the stark difference between this week's bumper yield of points and the meagre pickings he has had in the BBL. He has scored double the amount of points this week than he has in the whole of his time with the Sydney Thunder. I think the bell has tolled on Joe Root's T20 aspirations. Time to move on to bigger and longer things. 

I think it must be pretty hard being a professional sportsman. One week you can be riding high whilst the next you are in the doldrums. Kuldeep Yadav is a case in point of this. Last week's top scorer with 223 points sees himself register 0 this week. This is zero points for a game that he played in and bowled 10 overs. After this performance he was then dropped for the third ODI. This really is a confusing period of time for the young Indian spinner. This confusion only becomes slightly more mystifying when you see that Kuldeep plays proportionately better when India are on the back foot. His table topping Week came from a drawn Test and a lost ODI, whilst this week's pointless yield saw two Indian victories and a series claimed by his nation. On his day Kuldeep can be destructive but, as is the case with the second ODI, he can also come across as relatively ineffectual. It goes without saying that this poor week has changed his overall position, dropping from second place to just outside the top ten. It is still early days and hard to tell which of these two points he will come to rest at. 

Week

Simon Harmer - 290
Shakib Al Hasan - 257
Duanne Olivier - 251
Mohammad Abbas - 250
Joe Root - 237
Virat Kohli- 210
Glenn Maxwell - 181
Ben Stokes - 166
Jonny Bairstow - 142
Rohit Sharma - 72
Jack Leach - 65
Rashid Khan - 58
Joe Burns - 56
Callum Ferguson - 28
Jos Buttler - 13
Jeetan Patel - 1
Kuldeep Yadav - 0

Shubman Gill - dnp 
Kane Williamson - dnp 

Shai Hope - ytp 
Shreyas Iyer - ytp 
Morne Morkel - ytp 
Wayne Parnell - ytp 
Abdur Razzak - ytp 

Overall 

Simon Harmer - 480
Shakib Al Hasan - 465
Duanne Olivier - 421
Glenn Maxwell - 376
Mohammad Abbas - 360
Joe Root- 288
Rohit Sharma - 265
Rashid Khan - 262
Virat Kohli- 236
Kane Williamson - 232
Kuldeep Yadav - 223
Ben Stokes - 166
Jonny Bairstow - 142
Jos Buttler - 131
Shubman Gill - 129
Callum Ferguson - 106
Joe Burns - 92
Jeetan Patel - 91
Jack Leach - 65

Shai Hope - ytp 
Shreyas Iyer - ytp 
Morne Morkel - ytp 
Wayne Parnell - ytp 
Abdur Razzak- ytp 

Shakib Al-Hasan - The Best Cricketer of the Week

The year has been bookended by outstanding performances from Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan but, in the words of Vanessa Williams, he went and saved the best for last. At the end of the month of January, Shakib had won Cricketer of the Week twice and was second in the overall placings. Since then injury and sporadic activity saw him only finish atop the overall league once more in August, however his performances in the T20 series against West Indies have been nothing short of phenomenal. The allrounder has proved himself just that with 103 runs and 8 wickets - including a T20 five-fer. He also marked the Week by becoming the third highest wicket taker in T20Is with 86. It speaks of the gulf between players just outside the top ten that, despite his haul of 403 points this week, he doesn't move a single place in the overall table. He is now 41 points off Ravi Ashwin in 12th place. With next week being a round up of the year and a breakdown of the top ten, it seems apposite to look at our mid table. This little patch of our overall table sees Ravis Ashwin and Jadeja as well as Shakib very much adrift of the top eleven but also fields ahead of Quinton De Kock in 15th. These three players are all in this cricketing limbo for a number of reasons. As has been very clear in these posts, Ravi Jadeja's season has oscillated between god awful and phenomenal, so I guess it seems fitting he languishes bang in the middle of the table. Ashwin is in the autumn of his cricketing years and is seemingly being protected in the mould of Jimmy Anderson so he has not played as many games as he once did. And then, to round it off, Shakib who has been injury plagued. All three of these players are capable of turning in great performances but not with the regularity to push on into the top ten.

You work hard for your team all season. You, almost single-handedly get them to the final. You know the fate of the team rests on your shoulders. So what do you do? You crap out for five and hand victory to the opposing team. Such was the fate of Quinton De Kock who ended his most consistently profligate period of time in 2018 with his lowest score of the year. Anti-climactic disappointments aside, De Kock has used the Mzansi Super League to boost his points hugely. The South African wicket-keeper-batsman added exactly 800 points to his overall tally during the tournament and now sees himself the leading active South African international on our overall list. Our South African contingent have disappointed this year; clustered, as they are, in the lower mid-section of the table and far far adrift of the top half. The fact that a player that was widely ignored throughout the year's marquee domestic T20 competition has managed to overhaul his more wellthought of colleagues is testament to the damp squib of a year for the Saffers. 

I have focused on the middle of the table and just outside the top ten. Before I move on to the only surviving battle within the top ten I suppose a cursory glance at the bottom of the table is needed. Languishing in last place is George Bailey. His sporadic scores of 50+ throughout the latter stages of the year have not managed to see him 'pull a Jadeja' and spurt up the table. He is still 62 points off Steve Smith in 23rd. In a death grip of futility Smith and Warner have stayed glued to one another since the fateful day in South Africa and sit in 22nd and 23rd. Whatever emerges about their future in 2019 should be fascinating, although they are very unlikely to be retained on our watch list. I mean, even the BPL considered Smith damaged property enough for Comilla to drop him. Then in 21st (notional bottom place) sits Hashim Amla. This week has been a better one for him as he coupled his now obligatory duck with 61 in his second innings for Cape Cobras against the Warriors. It has been an underwhelming year for the bearded one but we have walked this path before in previous posts. 

From about March, Kane Williamson has made tenth place his base camp from which he has not wandered too far from before scurrying back from either direction. This week he scored 121 thanks to a decent batting performance against Pakistan but this was not enough to stop the onwards charge of Nathan Lyon to knock him down into eleventh place in the eleventh hour. Williamson has been by far the most consistent player of the two throughout the year. As was mentioned last week, Lyon has spent long periods of time inactive; this has meant that between January and September, Williamson had the most points per month in all but two. This has all changed since October though, when Lyon has gone into hyperdrive. With monthly scores of 894 in October, 599 in November and 1054 so far in December, Lyon's unstoppable surge has seen him on an upward trajectory from 15th place in the first week of October to tenth today. With a week left in the year both players have Test matches on their schedule. Will Lyon's 191 point cushion be enough to lock Williamson out? 

Week

Shakib Al Hasan - 403
Nathan Lyon - 344
Jeetan Patel - 212
Simon Harmer - 197
Virat Kohli- 190
Dean Elgar - 122
Kane Williamson- 121
Rashid Khan - 110 
Aaron Finch - 105
Hashim Amla - 81
George Bailey - 62
Jofra Archer - 50
Jos Buttler - 50
Shaun Marsh - 50
Joe Root- 18
Quinton De Kock- 5
Mitchell Marsh - 3
Ravi Ashwin- dnp 
AB De Villiers- dnp 
JP Duminy- dnp 
Ravi Jadeja- dnp 
Sunil Narine- dnp 
Steve Smith - dnp 
David Warner - dnp 

Overall

Simon Harmer - 8426
Rashid Khan - 6135
Jeetan Patel - 5819
Virat Kohli- 4855
Jos Buttler - 4584
Jofra Archer - 4433
Sunil Narine- 4377
Joe Root - 4198
Aaron Finch - 4149
Nathan Lyon - 4380
Kane Williamson - 4181
Ravi Ashwin - 3845
Shakib Al Hasan - 3804
Ravi Jadeja - 3303
Quinton de Kock - 3081
Mitchell Marsh - 2909
Dean Elgar- 2736
Shaun Marsh- 2599
AB De Villiers- 2542
JP Duminy - 2496
Hashim Amla - 2283
David Warner - 1401
Steve Smith - 1350
George Bailey - 1298

Sunil Narine - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Could a player this year make more of an impact in one week than the dominance Sunil Narine has shown in the West Indies' Regional Super50 competition? The unlikeable mystery spinner has not played a game since the start of December when he turned out for the Dhaka Dynamites in the Bangladesh Premier League but he did not show any sign of rustiness as he scorched a 46 ball 51 for Trinidad and Tobago in the opening game against Barbados. He has since added to that with 10 wickets in three games over five days - his best being a stunning 5-10 over the Combined Campuses and Colleges team. His economy in all three games has been under three and his form must be leaving the West Indies team bitter at the fact that the precocious spinner still refuses to turn out for his national side, outside of major competitions. His 487 points in a week is the highest by an individual player so far in 2018 and catapults him up the overall table, putting him one position above Nathan Lyon - the first cricketer of the week from Week 1. If his dominance in this competition continues who knows how many points he can rack up. 

I thought that this might be the year for Kane Williamson to put himself back amongst the top batsmen in the world. A few years ago the four key batsmen of Kohli, Smith, Root and Williamson were setting the cricketing world alight. The first two have accelerated into the stratosphere, the third one has remained treading water whilst the last one....appears to be stagnating. He scored 17 runs across his two T20 games for New Zealand this week taking his run of single figure scores to three in a row. His average for 2018 stands at 31.4 but if you remove his two big scores against Pakistan it is a more worrying 15.75. Williamson needs to use the triangular tournament against England and Australia to turn his year around. 

I am still surprised to see JP Duminy at the top of the overall rankings - especially when his transition from domestic cricket back to international cricket ended with a thunderingly disappointing yield of just 12 runs. Despite this lack of form, that began in his final few games in the Momentum One Day Cup, there is only Joe Root who may overtake him in the near future. Shakib is injured, Mitchell Marsh is not selected for the T20 series and Jos Buttler is just too far off the pace. Regardless of his performances this week I still expect to see the unlikely figure of JP Duminy atop the overall list next week. 

With Duminy unexpected at the top, who here expected to see David Warner at the bottom? Only Jeetan Patel sits between Warner and the very bottom of the table - and the veteran New Zealander has played 4 less games than Warner. Warner finds himself in the rather ignominious position that George Bailey found himself in for a number of weeks over January; namely scoring more points with his work in the field compared to his batting. Even more gallingly, Bailey now sits seven places above the stand in Australian captain with 129 points separating them. 

Week 

Sunil Narine 487
Virat Kohli 162
Mitchell Marsh 106
George Bailey 103
Joe Root 92
Jos Buttler 61
David Warner 61
Shaun Marsh 60 
Quinton de Kock 44
Jofra Archer 30
Kane Williamson 27 
Dean Elgar 20
Rashid Khan 20
Hashim Amla 16
JP Duminy 12
Steve Smith 12 
Nathan Lyon 1
Shakib Al Hasan dnp 
Ravi Ashwin dnp
Simon Harmer dnp
Ravi Jadeja dnp
AB De Villiers dnp
Aaron Finch dnp 
Jeetan Patel dnp

Overall

JP Duminy - 761
Joe Root - 622
Shakib Al Hasan - 608
Mitchell Marsh - 605
Jos Buttler - 597
Aaron Finch - 591
Virat Kohli- 538
Kane Williamson - 497
Sunil Narine- 487
Nathan Lyon - 466
Ravi Ashwin - 435
Jofra Archer - 405
Rashid Khan - 390
Simon Harmer - 351
George Bailey - 344
AB De Villiers- 321
Quinton de Kock - 315
Hashim Amla - 289
Dean Elgar- 286
Steve Smith - 275
Shaun Marsh- 256
David Warner - 215
Jeetan Patel - 108
Ravi Jadeja - ytp