Mohammad Abbas - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Mohammad Abbas has not had the impact in 2019 that we thought he may have had. At the start of the year he was one of the most promising bowlers in world cricket and was expected to spend a long period of time destroying frail County Championship Division 2 batting orders with his scathing deliveries. This has not come to pass. This is not solely the fault of the Pakistani bowler. He spent long periods of time inactive due to the insistence of the PCB that the bowler train alongside the Pakistan World Cup team despite the fact that they knew he was not due to be selected. There was also time wasted as he played in the ODI series against Australia and was exposed as being woefully inept at 50 over bowling. Since he joined up with Leicestershire his impact has been mixed. He has had two very good performances; one four weeks ago where he got match figures of 6/96 against Derbyshire and again this week where his 6/88 against Northamptonshire is enough to see him claim his highest score of 2019 and scrape his inaugural Best Cricketer of the Week accolade by 3 points. This sits amongst other less prestigious cricketing feats and wicketless spells. His performance this week sees him pull himself to the very top of the bottom third of players in our overall table - 68 points above Kuldeep Yadav but 290 points from Morne Morkel. This is all to play for though as another week like this one could see a further lurch up the table. Last year it was Ravi Jadeja who proved to be our late surger, could Abbas be capable of the same feat?

Shakib Al Hasan was so close to sealing Cricketer of the Week it is almost criminal. The Bangladesh captain has lit up the World Cup and is that very rare thing in international cricket: simultaneously his country's best bowler and best batter. He has taken to this World Cup as seamlessly as he did the BPL at the start of the year. In the five weeks he played for Dhaka, he scored 1129 points at an average of 225.8 a week. Easy, some people said. Playing against such green Bangladeshi bowlers and a group of second tier T20 mercenaries is nothing of note. But Shakib has brought that exact same form onto the biggest stage. Over this last five weeks he has scored 1026 at a higher average of 206.2 a week. An unbelievable achievement when you look at the quality that the veteran captain is up against. What is even more note-worthy is how he spreads his point scoring across the disciplines. This week 160 of his 231 came with the ball as he scored a fivefer against Afghanistan. Last week a staggering 235 of his 275 points came with the bat. Imagine the carnage he would cause if he could combine those two disciplines. Shakib's form has been rewarded by his return to the overall top 5 as he muscles Jonny Bairstow into sixth position. 

I can't help but notice that some of our high-flying players have had far from a high- flying World Cup Week. Second place Joe Root and fifth place Jonny Bairstow all had scores of 100 or more last week but came up against the immovable Titans of Sri Lankan cricket and hit something of a wall. Both Englishman hit something of a wall at precisely the wrong time. Root's weekly tally of 18 is his lowest active week since gameweek 10, whilst the oftentimes prolific Jonny Bairstow has not scored lower than this week's score of 37 since Week 15. This is problematic timing for the two Englishman and the team they represent. They are the team's bankers and they need to keep their currency up. On a personal level it sees Joe Root drop to third place again, having been overtaken by Jeetan Patel, whilst Jonny Bairstow drops out of the overall top five for the first time in three weeks. That time it was just a blip before he returned back the following week. England fans will be hoping for a repeat performance. At the top of the table we find a similar situation with Glenn Maxwell. His score of 33 is the lowest weekly score he has attained since March. This dents the number one player in the world's lead to 725 runs, however with him being the only player guaranteed more World Cup games after next week he has time to push on. 

Week

Mohammad Abbas - 234
Shakib Al Hasan - 231
Morne Morkel - 208
Jeetan Patel - 189 
Kane Williamson - 171
Jack Leach - 165
Ben Stokes - 149 
Simon Harmer - 125
Virat Kohli- 102
Jos Buttler - 65
Rashid Khan - 60
Kuldeep Yadav - 50
Shai Hope - 45
Jonny Bairstow- 37
Glenn Maxwell - 33
Rohit Sharma- 28
Joe Root - 18 

Joe Burns - dnp 
Callum Ferguson - dnp 
Shubman Gill - dnp 
Shreyas Iyer - dnp 
Duanne Olivier - dnp 
Wayne Parnell - dnp 
Abdur Razzak- dnp 

Overall 

Glenn Maxwell - 3741
Jeetan Patel - 3016
Joe Root- 2877
Simon Harmer - 2760
Shakib Al Hasan - 2730
Jonny Bairstow - 2558
Ben Stokes - 2493
Rashid Khan - 2455
Virat Kohli- 2380
Jos Buttler - 2229
Kane Williamson - 2220
Rohit Sharma - 2128
Shreyas Iyer - 1887
Duanne Olivier - 1852
Wayne Parnell - 1753
Shai Hope - 1739
Morne Morkel - 1710
Mohammad Abbas - 1420
Kuldeep Yadav - 1352
Callum Ferguson - 1080
Shubman Gill - 1039
Jack Leach - 944
Abdur Razzak- 898
Joe Burns - 709

Joe Burns - The Best Cricketer of the Week

He was a spent force in Australian Cricket. He was well on his way to being put out to pasture. He could have easily gone the way of famous Australian discards such as Martin Love, Michael Bevan and Michael Klinger. But then two Australians got banned and changed the face of the Australian Test team, leading to a recall for Joe Burns and a classy century against Sri Lanka last weekend. This has paved his way to his debut Cricketer of the Week accolade - the first awarded to an Australian batsmen since we started in January 2018. The 229 points scored by Burns this week sees him rocket into the top ten of our overall rankings after languishing in the bottom three of active players last week. This performance was more important than sealing a victory over Sri Lanka - it also puts his name in the frame for the Ashes touring party irregardless of the inclusion of Messrs. Smith and/or Warner. In the short term, Burns will be looking forward to joining back up with Queensland for the second half of the Sheffield Shield season. From his six games thus far in the competition, he is averaging 47.20 so it is very likely he will be hovering around the top ten as the Australian summer continues. 

He has had a phenomenal BPL. Despite his Dhaka team losing the final of the BBL, Shakib Al Hasan's position as the Best Cricketer in the World in 2019 is pretty emphatic. He has a 532 point lead over second place Rohit Sharma and finds himself in a dominant position after six weeks. This time last year he was in 12th position - a placing he finally settled in after the year was out - and had 608 points - nearly half his current yield. You may think this is down to the sheer amount of games the Bangladesh captain has played. With 14 games so far in 2019, Shakib averages a strong 83.64 points per game. The aforementioned second placed Rohit Sharma averages 58.09 from his 11 games for India whilst third place Glenn Maxwell has 57.5 for his 10 games across the BBL and for Australia. We always said that, when fit, Shakib was a force to be reckoned with - and with his finger injury finally fully fixed, it seems like we are seeing Shakib at his very best. The fun does not stop here for Shakib, as next week sees the start of a tour to New Zealand. How long can Shakib stay in top spot?

Rashid Khan does seem to struggle more in the BBL than he does in other competitions. He prefers shorter and sharper bursts of cricket where he can feast on tired batsmen's aching limbs. We have seen this in the differences between his point scoring in longer competitions like the BBL and the T20 Blast compared to the complete devastation that he created in the ICC World Cup Qualifying Tournament last year. That being said, Rashid is performing way under par so far in 2019. Rashid was something of a three-fer king in 2019 but so far in 2019 he has failed to get above a brace - with his best figures for Adelaide being 2/21 against Sydney Thunder. He has achieved a brace in 4 of his ten games this year, with one wicket in another 4 and 2 games passing by wicketless. His economies are also well down on what we would expect from the Afghanistan spinner. It has been a tough year for Rashid personally, after the death of his father in mid January, however he will hope that he can return to his destructive Best as soon as possible. After six weeks he is in tenth position with 432 - at this point last year he was in 9th with 660. 

Week

Joe Burns- 229
Shakib Al Hasan - 136
Glenn Maxwell - 136
Rohit Sharma - 121
Kane Williamson - 104
Callum Ferguson - 67
Rashid Khan - 52
Jeetan Patel - 30

Mohammad Abbas - dnp 
Jonny Bairstow- dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
Simon Harmer - dnp 
Shai Hope - dnp 
Shreyas Iyer - dnp 
Virat Kohli - dnp 
Jack Leach - dnp 
Duanne Olivier - dnp 
Wayne Parnell - dnp 
Joe Root- dnp 
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp 

Morne Morkel - ytp 
Abdur Razzak- ytp 

Overall 

Shakib Al Hasan - 1171
Rohit Sharma - 639
Glenn Maxwell - 575
Kane Williamson - 548
Kuldeep Yadav - 518
Callum Ferguson - 512
Simon Harmer - 500
Duanne Olivier - 491
Virat Kohli- 444
Rashid Khan - 432
Joe Root- 418
Joe Burns - 366
Ben Stokes - 359
Jonny Bairstow - 310
Mohammad Abbas - 260
Jos Buttler - 246
Jeetan Patel - 217
Shreyas Iyer - 203
Shai Hope - 174
Shubman Gill - 145
Jack Leach - 65
Wayne Parnell - 52

Morne Morkel - ytp 
Abdur Razzak- ytp 

Shakib Al Hasan - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Do you think it's possible to celebrate your individual success at the end of a week where your team has performed poorly? This is the quandary faced by Cricketer of the Week Shakib Al Hasan. Personally the player has picked up 314 points which sees him to the top of the table this week and also helps him overtake Simon Harmer into top spot for the year. From a team perspective, his Dhaka franchise have lost back to back for the first time in this year's competition, ruining their run of just a single loss in 7 games. The talented allrounder loves a spell of success at the start of the year. His Cricketer of the Week accolade in Week 4 of this year's completion mirrors where he won the corresponding week in 2018. The key to his success is the sheer amount of games he has played so early in the year, but with an earlier IPL and then the World Cup he could keep this pressure up. His seven wickets this week also helped him to be the first player in the BPL to claim 100 wickets - a continuation of players on our list performing disproportionately better in their home T20 tournament than elsewhere. 

I'll hold my hands up and say that calling Kuldeep Yadav inconsistent last week was a mistake. Instead I would now like to say he is consistently inconsistent. The last three weeks has seen him go from top spot, to failing to register a point and being dropped from the team and then last week to finishing in third place and reclaiming a place in the top five overall. To add to this consistency dilemma, his two performances against New Zealand have both been consistently similar. He bowled ten overs in both games, he claimed four wickets in both games, he leaked only six runs more in the second game than he did the first. Spinners need to find themselves a bit of rhythm in order to regularly get good figures and Yadav is being allowed to find that rhythm in New Zealand. He is amazingly precocious for a 24 year old . We heap plaudits on Virat Kohli for the young age at which he breaks records, but today Yadav drew equal with Anil Kumble's record for four or more wickets in ODI internationals outside Asia - and he did it in 76 fewer games. No mean feat in an era purported to be batter friendly. He really is one to watch. 

People have been pouring praise on Callum Ferguson's sumptuous 113 off 53 balls for the Sydney Thunder against Perth this week...and if we awarded points for tenacity, grit, style and flair, Ferguson would be streets ahead of Shakib. It up there with Marlon Samuels' display in 2012 and Mike Hussey's 60 off 24 as one of the finest T20 batting displays I have ever seen. The closest we do get to awarding players for their showmanship is the points allocated for Strike Rate - it is a rare treat to award 40 points but Ferguson feels like he deserves even more for his strike rate of 213. This is no flash in the pan for the Sydney captain, as he also bagged a half century off 36 balls in the previous game against the Melbourne Renegades. It seems like he has felt he can really let loose now that Jos Buttler has left for international duties. It seems fitting that Ferguson is our biggest mover on the overall table this week - leaping from 16th place last week to seventh. With another five games for the Sydney Thunder in this seemingly unending BBL, we may see Ferguson really rack up some points in this form. 

Week

Shakib Al Hasan - 314
Callum Ferguson - 275
Kuldeep Yadav- 260
Shreyas Iyer - 180
Rohit Sharma - 137
Kane Williamson - 134
Virat Kohli - 98 
Duanne Olivier - 70
Joe Burns - 45
Rashid Khan - 25
Glenn Maxwell - 20

Mohammad Abbas - dnp 
Jonny Bairstow- dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
Shubman Gill - dnp 
Simon Harmer - dnp 
Jack Leach- dnp 
Jeetan Patel - dnp 
Joe Root- dnp 
Ben Stokes - dnp 

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

Overall 

Shakib Al Hasan - 779
Simon Harmer - 500
Duanne Olivier - 491
Kuldeep Yadav - 483
Rohit Sharma - 402
Glenn Maxwell - 396
Callum Ferguson - 381
Kane Williamson - 366
Virat Kohli- 334
Joe Root- 288
Rashid Khan - 287
Mohammad Abbas - 260
Shreyas Iyer - 180
Ben Stokes - 166
Jonny Bairstow - 142
Joe Burns - 137
Jos Buttler - 131
Shubman Gill - 129
Jeetan Patel - 91
Jack Leach - 65
Shai Hope - ytp 
Morne Morkel - ytp 
Wayne Parnell - ytp 
Abdur Razzak- ytp 

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