Had you asked me a month ago I would have said the selection of veteran Bangladesh bowler Abdur Razzak was a mistake. Midway through October, Razzak was rooted at the foot of the table and 230 points behind second bottom Joe Burns. Fast forward to this week and Razzak has got Cricketer of the Week three weeks out of the last five and has swelled his total by 1027 points through 31 wickets in the Bangladesh Cricket League. He is now 21st and 453 points above Burns. This week he got 6 wickets for Khulna Division - a mere drop in the ocean to his twelve wickets the previous week but he should probably count himself lucky to become the second player to score back to back positions at the top of the weekly list. His score of 200 is the lowest top-scoring weekly points total since Shreyas Iyer's 142 ten weeks ago, however in a comparatively low scoring week he has the best of the rest of the field. His next target on the overall List is Mohammad Abbas who is just 114 points ahead of him and with the form that the veteran is in you would not put it past him nor begrudge him of it. In fact you would,not begrudge him a return to the national team, something the man himself suggested he was still hopeful for this week.
Witnessing the reshuffle of the top ten over the next few weeks should be lively. Last week I pointed out that there was just 185 points between fourth placed Virat Kohli and tenth placed Ben Stokes. This week there is just 189 points between fourth placed Rashid Khan and tenth placed Jonny Bairstow. Such is the fluidity of the top ten, that two performances from Rashid Khan and Ben Stokes that weren't enough to make the top 5 scores for the week saw everyone between fourth and tenth change spot. A mere two wickets in two matches for Afghanistan saw Rashid Khan overtake the disgraced Shakib Al Hasan - knocking him out of the top five - whilst also displacing a disappointing Virat Kohli, forcing him down to fifth. The figure of Rashid Khan snuggled up against Jeetan Patel and Simon Harmer is very nostalgic for those of us who were following The List last year. Ben Stokes' achievement was more impressive with 80 points from a 20 ball 30 and conceding 33 runs off 8 overs for an England XI in a warm up game against a New Zealand XI. He overtook an inactive Jonny Bairstow and another disappointing Indian batsman in the form of Rohit Sharma.
The performances of Shai Hope can fall into two categories in 2019. Ones where his slow strike rate was punctured by good bowling and those where his slow strike rate was allowed to mature by average bowling and he was able to go on and score big. The common denominator in all of these is......his slow strike rate. In the World Cup, a lot of the blame for this was placed at the feet of Chris Gayle whose pyrotechnics meant that you needed a batsman down the other end who would be able to play safe and keep the wagon rolling. Now we have seen the slightly remodelled West Indies 1.5 that Phil Simmons has put together and we see the same old Hope, we must start to think that this might just be his natural game. This hit and miss attitude has seen Hope underperform in this year's List. His century against Afghanistan this week sees him move into joint 17th place. Normally a player scoring a hundred in an ODI would be jostling for top spot, especially in a low scoring week, however this week Hope was lucky to scrape into the top five as all he registered was the 109 points for his runs plus the thirty bonus for his century. Undeniably the man is a talent. His century this week made him the fifth West Indian to score over a thousand runs in a calendar year, joining the illustrious names of Gayle, Desmond Haynes, Viv Richards and Brian Lara - however his point scoring credentials are negligible.
Week
Abdur Razzak - 200
Shreyas Iyer - 180
Callum Ferguson - 142
Shai Hope - 139
Simon Harmer - 106
Ben Stokes - 80
Mohammad Abbas - 70
Rashid Khan - 61
Joe Root - 51
Jos Buttler - 48
Kuldeep Yadav- 40
Duanne Olivier - 29
Joe Burns - 21
Jack Leach - 20
Rohit Sharma - 18
Virat Kohli - 10
Morne Morkel - 0
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
Jonny Bairstow- dnp
Shubman Gill - dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Wayne Parnell - dnp
Jeetan Patel - dnp
Kane Williamson- dnp
Overall
Glenn Maxwell - 5712
Simon Harmer - 5105
Jeetan Patel - 4385
Rashid Khan - 3914
Virat Kohli- 3901
Shakib Al Hasan -3862
Joe Root- 3820
Ben Stokes - 3786
Rohit Sharma - 3747
Jonny Bairstow - 3725
Shreyas Iyer - 3296
Duanne Olivier - 2852
Jos Buttler - 2841
Wayne Parnell - 2743
Kane Williamson - 2524
Shubman Gill - 2459
Shai Hope - 2438
Morne Morkel - 2438
Jack Leach - 2398
Callum Ferguson - 2218
Mohammad Abbas - 2039
Abdur Razzak- 1925
Kuldeep Yadav - 1760
Joe Burns - 1472
