Ravi Jadeja - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Just when it seems things can't get too much better for Ravi Jadeja - they go ahead and do. After being an afterthought for the majority of the England tour and a late call up for the Asia Cup, the spinner has now find himself back in the side and was the best performer of the week in the first Test against West Indies. What would have come as a surprise to many is the fact that 130 of the 310 points he got this week came with the bat, as the veteran Indian registered his first ever century. This is the fourth week in a row where Jadeja's points have been in the three figures - in that time he has also had two weeks where his points were over three hundred. This is not a bad haul for a player who has spent most of this year being very near to the bottom of the pile of our overall league. His red hot month now sees him in twelfth place - just behind JP Duminy and the large gap between eleventh spot and the top ten. It really does show how a good few weeks can have a bearing on your year. 

Do not think that it is only Jadeja who is having a great late 2018. Alongside him there are a foursome of Australians who are all showing their worth as the leaves fall from the trees in the UK and the sun is high on the other side of the planet. In the UAE Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Marsh and Shaun Marsh have all registered high scores this week. Lyon's perhaps stands out most of all. Having only recently dropped out of the top ten despite being inactive for the last ten weeks, the spinner returned looking as fresh as ever with a startlingly impressive looking eight-fer against a rather green looking Pakistan A side. He looks like a different prospect since the last time Australia were tourists in that neck of the woods. Where the inexperienced Pakistanis felt the force of the ball from Lyon, they felt the return to form of the Marsh brothers with the bat. Collectively the siblings registered 256, with Mitchell's 162 being the Jewell in the crown for the Aussies. Whilst he is clearly still uncomfortable with the ball, Mitchell looks a force to be reckoned with as he takes on his new mantle as joint vice (and seemingly future) captain tomorrow morning. If fitness holds out for these pair there are a few inactive South Africans ahead of them that will be feeling nervous. The final Aussie that has impressed this week is George Bailey. Having spent most of 2018 with his feet up, it has taken the Tasmanian a little more time than his colleagues to get back into the game but two seventy plus scores from the ex-international has seen his side progress to the quarter finals of the JLT Cup. He finishes fifth in the weekly rankings but is still 412 points off Steve Smith in twenty-third spot. Bit of work to be done....but not impossible. 

It seems even when they are not sharing a pitch we can still compare them. The Root v Kohli argument rumbles on. This week the severity of their matches were considerably different, but (yet again) their scores were desperately tight. With just nine points separating the Indian captain from his English counterpart, Kohli shades it this week but as a slew of ODIs await England, it is not inconceivable that Root may overhaul his nemesis. With just 166 between them on the overall table, one good performance matched by one poor one could see Root outstrip Kohli and take sixth place. Both are playing teams considerably weaker than them so points are up for grabs however the fact Kohli is playing at home might give him the advantage. I have stopped trying to predict the pendulous to-ing and fro-ing between these two and am instead just going to sit back and enjoy; safe in the knowledge that they can both do well and not hurt the other. 

Week 

Ravi Jadeja - 310
Nathan Lyon - 300
Ravi Ashwin 237 
Mitchell Marsh - 227
George Bailey- 199
Shaun Marsh - 144
Virat Kohli - 169
Joe Root - 160
Sunil Narine - 139
Aaron Finch- 94
Rashid Khan - 64
JP Duminy- 61
Dean Elgar - 16
Jos Buttler - 0
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
Hashim Amla - dnp 
Jofra Archer - dnp 
Quinton De Kock- dnp 
AB De Villiers - dnp 
Simon Harmer - dnp 
Jeetan Patel - dnp 
Steve Smith - dnp 
David Warner - dnp 
Kane Williamson - dnp 

Overall

Simon Harmer - 6025
Jeetan Patel - 5011
Rashid Khan - 4936
Jofra Archer - 4213
Jos Buttler - 3974
Virat Kohli- 3671
Sunil Narine- 3549
Joe Root - 3505
Aaron Finch - 3437
Kane Williamson - 3203
Shakib Al Hasan - 2886
Ravi Ashwin - 2818
JP Duminy - 2397
Ravi Jadeja - 2257
Nathan Lyon - 2133
Hashim Amla - 2091
Quinton de Kock - 2020
AB De Villiers- 2010
Dean Elgar- 1996
Mitchell Marsh - 1890
Shaun Marsh- 1642
David Warner - 1401
Steve Smith - 1350
George Bailey - 938

Rashid Khan -The Best Cricketer of the Week

I feel that some players are built for certain situations. Your Jos Buttlers and your AB De Villiers love a protracted T20 tournament. Your Simon Harmers and your Jeetan Patels love a sprawling long form tournament. Rashid Khan enjoys a short intense burst of cricket against high class international opposition. It is here where he excels. And excel he has this week as he has picked up 405 points across his three games in the Asia Cup - a tournament where his team has impressed by matching the big boys stroke for stroke. A rare treat for Afghanistan fans was when Rashid gave everyone a reminder that his first discipline was with the bat as he motored to 57* against Bangladesh. This, coupled with 7 wickets across three games, has put him head and shoulders above the rest this week both overall and in terms of his Asia Cup compatriots. Shakib Al Hasan finishes third this week but with nearly half the amount of Rashid's points whilst Ravi Jadeja, who began the week playing for Saurashtra, picked up 5th place with one amazing performance against Bangladesh when called up at short notice. Interestingly only one of these three have moved position on the overall table; Rashid remains in third but moves closer to Patel in second, Shakib infinitesimally narrows the canyon between tenth and eleventh whilst Jadeja overtakes Mitchell Marsh to claim nineteenth. 

The mystery of Sunil Narine continues. Throughout the year I have mentioned the disproportion between the West Indian spinners performances in the IPL and his performances elsewhere. Clearly a spinner is likely to thrive in Indian conditions but for a player that has also become a powerful T20 opener off the back of that tournament, his dip in form with the bat has been equally inexplicable. In his 16 games for Kolkata this season, Narine got 17 wickets and 357 runs - averaging just over a wicket every match (obviously) and 22.3 with the bat. Fast forward to the CPL where Narine is performing in home conditions and at some of the exact same grounds where he started the year with some exceptionally fine fifty over performances for Trinidad and Tobago. Here he is averaging 5.5 across his 12 games and has got a mere 8 wickets. This has gained him just 436 points across the course of the tournament. I have no answer as to why this drop in form is so stark. It cannot be conditions otherwise he would be a flop in the Regional Super50 competition. It can't be big crowds pumping him up in the IPL because the CPL hasn't been doing too badly in those respects this year. It will have to remain a mystery. 

And there there is George Bailey. People remember George Bailey with the sort of misty nostalgia that one considers ones youth. A transient thought that will occasionally drift into view as you fall asleep. More of a concept than an actual Cricketer. This all changed this week when George Bailey, a figure many considered mythological, rose again and actually played cricket. With a bat and ball and everything. Bailey last featured in our league in Week 13 and has had a laconic 24 weeks off. For such a long period away from the game, the Tasmanian didn't look too shabby in his two games on his way to 81 points in the week, the highlight being an 18 ball 25 batting at 5 versus Victoria. This has seen him break the 700 point threshold. For frame of reference JP Duminy was the first to break 700 in Week 5 and our leader, Simon Harmer, followed suit in Week 8. Bailey is now 638 points away from Steve Smith in 23rd place - a player who broke into the 700s in Week 13. Bailey better hope for a phenomenal Australian Summer.