Nathan Lyon - The Best Cricketer of the Week

All through the year Nathan Lyon has proved himself as capable of producing incredibly destructive performances; his sixth Cricketer of the Week accolade is testament to this. These massive scores have been needed for a player who has been inactive for as long as he has throughout the year. The average number of inactive weeks in 2018 for the top ten players in our overall list is 18 - Jofra Archer has most with 23 and Rashid Khan has least with 12. Nathan Lyon, who sits just outside the top ten, has had 30! What sets Lyon apart from the rest is that when he does play he registers big! His average points scored per week is 202 which puts him second only to league leader Simon Harmer's 229. His eight wickets against India in the first test are even more highly prized due to the fact that they are against players who are supposedly the best players of spin in the world. The player termed the Greatest of All Time is making his claim to be one of the most under rated players on our overall list. 

However there is a caveat to all this. It is has been a bowlers week with the top four all being wicket takers. With 151 points separating Lyon from fifth place AB De Villiers and 69 from the South African batsman to fourth place, we can, yet again, see that bowlers have the edge in this game. Despite this, as George Orwell might have said, not all bowlers are created equal. So what has made the difference? Predictably it is maidens bowled. Between them the top three bowlers scored 205 points from maiden overs. Ravi Ashwin bagged the most with 110, then Jeetan Patel with 50 and Nathan Lyon trailing behind with 45. Compare this to Shakib Al Hasan in fourth who scored the grand total of 0 maidens in his three ODIs and you can see why the Bangladesh captain might have been trailing. In three posts time, maidens will not be worth the five points that they have this year so the frugal trio at the top of the tree need to enjoy these luxuries while they last. 

These last few weeks I have been commenting on the lack of success for Hashim Amla. This has continued this week as Dean Elgar (129), Shaun Marsh (82) and AB De Villiers (226) have all scored well to draw away from the languishing Proteas batsman but it is the figure that they have all overtaken that has caught my eye this week. Now sat in 20th place is JP Duminy. His fall from grace has been worthy of Satan himself. Whilst most other players have enjoyed some jostling up and down the table throughout the year, Duminy has proved the Henry Jekyll of our list in as much as his "movement was thus wholly towards the worse." Between Weeks 2 and 6 JP Duminy rode majestic over our league in top spot, before spending five weeks in second and a further two weeks in third. From there he has continued to decline, dropping out of the top ten in Week 21 and now inactive for the last nine weeks. With the exception of seventh and eleventh place, Duminy has now positioned in every ranking between 1st and 20th. With him now taking up a commentary role as part of the broadcast team for the Mzansi Super League, potentially 2019 will see him focus more on his career after cricket than on the pitch. 

Week

Nathan Lyon - 377
Ravi Ashwin - 360 
Jeetan Patel - 296
Shakib Al Hasan - 295
AB De Villiers- 226
Quinton De Kock-136
Dean Elgar - 129
Mitchell Marsh- 107
Shaun Marsh- 82
Rashid Khan - 81
Aaron Finch- 61
Virat Kohli- 47
Simon Harmer - 30
Hashim Amla - 26
Jofra Archer- dnp 
George Bailey - dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
JP Duminy- dnp 
Ravi Jadeja- dnp 
Sunil Narine- dnp 
Joe Root- dnp 
Steve Smith - dnp 
David Warner - dnp 
Kane Williamson - dnp 

Overall

Simon Harmer - 8229
Rashid Khan - 6025
Jeetan Patel - 5607
Virat Kohli- 4665
Jos Buttler - 4534
Jofra Archer - 4383
Sunil Narine- 4377
Joe Root - 4180
Kane Williamson - 4060
Aaron Finch - 4044
Nathan Lyon - 4036
Ravi Ashwin - 3845
Shakib Al Hasan - 3405
Ravi Jadeja - 3303
Quinton de Kock - 3076
Mitchell Marsh - 2906
Dean Elgar- 2614
Shaun Marsh- 2549
AB De Villiers- 2542
JP Duminy - 2496
Hashim Amla - 2202
David Warner - 1401
Steve Smith - 1350
George Bailey - 1236

Quinton De Kock - The Best Cricketer of the Week

It is in the Mzansi Super League's favour that their summer tournament has very little competition due to the dormancy of most elite players at this time. In a week where 71% off our players were inactive, five of the seven players that registered points this week did so in the MSL. Very top of this tree is the inimitable Quinton De Kock who is finishing the year in impeccable form for Cape Town. His 360 point score seems very apposite for a wicket-keeper batsman who has been giving 360 degree virtuoso performances in his country's inaugural T20 tournament. There have been very few players in our list who have picked up 210 runs in a week purely relying on T20 games but 93 against Paarl and 108 versus Tshwane has seen De Kock put a distinctly average year behind him to claim Cricketer of the Week for the first time in 2018. He has also been flawless with the globes and is inarguably the star player of this tournament. I have mentioned a few times on these posts how QDK is oft overlooked - not least by his IPL franchise Bangalore, however it was announced this week that he has now been acquired by Mumbai. On this current form that could be a master stroke by the three time winners and could see 2019 be a very fruitful year for the South African. His performance this week has seen him overtake Mitchell Marsh and he is primed, suitably, to finish comfortably mid table. 

Never has a Test team been so overlooked than New Zealand have this year. Their hand full of Tests bookending the year have not done their team of talented players justice. Spearheading this list is, as ever, Kane Williamson. Undoubtably one of the finest batsmen of this generation, he has had to settle for IPL showings and County Championship run outs to satiate his burning desire for runs. This week he reminded the world of his Test batting calibre with a spectacular performance in both innings in the final Test against Pakistan. His 288 points sees him finish second for the week. In a year where Simon Harmer and Jeetan Patel have finished top of our weekly list a combined 13 times it must be fairly galling that the New Zealand captain has failed to do so even once - but that tells the story of the New Zealand cricketing calendar more than his performances finishing, as he will, in the top ten of our overall table. 2019 looks a more fruitful year for the Kiwis as Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh all visit their shores in the early part of the year as well as the World Cup in England but for Williamson 2018 must seem something of a damp squib. 

As performances this week have been so thin in the ground I just would like to draw your attention to two oddities that feature two of our players. Hashim Amla, who was a main feature in my post last week, was dropped by Durban for his weak performances. Last week I mentioned that he would have to put a real shift in to avoid finishing rock bottom of players that didn't have a more valid excuse...this decision looks like it has been rather taken off his hands. Another player whose 2018 has seen him evolve is Sunil Narine and his final game of the T10 league was indicative of this. The one-time bowler has been on the journey to being an impactful opening batsman during 2018 and this was underlined by the fact that he did not bowl a single ball for Bengal in their third place play off with Maratha and was instead used solely as a batsman. Is this now Narine's natural form? If selected for the 2019 list (which is quite a large if) we will see.

Week

Quinton De Kock- 360
Kane Williamson- 288
Simon Harmer - 145
Rashid Khan - 130
Dean Elgar- 63
AB De Villiers- 55
Sunil Narine- 15
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
Hashim Amla - dnp 
Jofra Archer- dnp 
Ravi Ashwi - dnp
George Bailey - dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
JP Duminy - dnp 
Aaron Finch- dnp 
Ravi Jadeja - dnp 
Virat Kohli- dnp 
Nathan Lyon - dnp 
Mitchell Marsh- dnp 
Shaun Marsh- dnp 
Jeetan Patel - dnp
Joe Root- dnp
Steve Smith - dnp 
David Warner - dnp 

Overall

Simon Harmer - 7199
Rashid Khan - 5944
Jeetan Patel - 5311
Virat Kohli- 4618
Jos Buttler - 4534
Jofra Archer - 4383
Sunil Narine- 4377
Joe Root - 4180
Kane Williamson - 4060
Aaron Finch - 3983
Nathan Lyon - 3659
Ravi Ashwin - 3485
Ravi Jadeja - 3303
Shakib Al Hasan - 3106
Quinton de Kock - 2940
Mitchell Marsh - 2799
JP Duminy - 2496
Dean Elgar- 2485
Shaun Marsh- 2467
AB De Villiers- 2316
Hashim Amla - 2176
David Warner - 1401
Steve Smith - 1350
George Bailey - 1236