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

Nathan Lyon - The Best Cricketer of the Week

When looking back over the last week's cricketing action it has made very clear the schizophrenic nature of our great game. Oftentimes the casual observer of our beloved game finds the different variants of the sport a mystery and does not understand the distinctions needed of both the observer and the participant. From those in the inner circle it is all too common for them to look down on certain forms of the game and heap praise on the others. This week there have been three very different type of contests being played out across the world that typify this problem. Further more the leading point scorer in each one of these disciplines further typifies the different styles of players we see in the modern game.

A quarter of our players were playing in good old fashioned long form cricket - four in the Sheffield Shield and a further two in Tests, that grandest of cricketing traditions. Cricketing purists who put this form of cricket on a pedestal will also be overjoyed to hear that five of the top six performers this week were participating in these games. Our top point scorer for the week was Nathan Lyon. A player fully dedicated to his nation's plight. A player who drops out of T20 tournaments in order to ensure his fitness for his national team. This is a level of elite honesty that Australian can only dream of in the post-Sandpapergate era. This week he churned out a nine wicket haul for New South Wales against Queensland. Lyon is a pin up boy for the long form cricket purist. A former groundsman who tenaciously plugged away at his game until he has become (statistically speaking) the best spinner Australia have ever seen. He ticks all the boxes that a Test cricket fan likes. Tenacity. An appealing backstory. A streak of classically Australian pugnacity. He has it all. He has now got the Australians to have a run against and, on current form, might be able to do a lot of damage. He is joined at the top of the table by the equally tenacious Shaun Marsh, whose late November spurt continues, and the indefatigable Shakib Al Hasan. 

This month has seen the launch of the Mzansi Super League and in an era where not all T20 franchise tournaments are created equal - this one has something close to a heart attached to it. The games have been of the highest quality and an almost perfect mix of domestic South African domestic players, South African international stars and international players have turned out so that all are levels of interest are catered for. The only South African player that is not participating is the injured JP Duminy and it is Mr Consistency himself, Quinton De Kock, that is the MSL's top point scorer this week. A good T20 league should raise the profile of one of that country's best players. We have seen it with Jasprit Bumrah in the IPL and with Pat Brown in the T20 Blast. QDK is clearly more renowned than that but in a year where he would rightfully feel rather overshadowed he is using this fledgling tournament to get back to his best. His 74 from 36 balls in yesterday's game against Jozi was a batting tour de force and his Cape Town team are very much in the driving seat with a 100% win ratio. His 170 points this week sees him overtake JP Duminy and become the highest ranked South African on our overall list. 

Anybody that has been keeping an eye on the T10 league can't help but enjoy it....but we need to question it's validity. A tournament where a 47 year old gets 4 wickets in 5 deliveries has question marks seeping out of every crack in the pitch. I have tried to write this section without showing any bias but it really is a struggle. Thee of our players are featuring in this money fuelled jaunt: Jofra Archer Rashid Khan and Sunil Narine. Archer and Khan are young. They need money. We can forgive them but there is something irritatingly inevitable about Narine's involvement. He is inevitably present. He is inevitably performing the best out of the trio. He is inevitably getting paid through the nose. Those last two points are inevitably linked. The spinner, who has turned his back on the West Indies set up long before his thirtieth birthday, is the most mercenary of all the mercenary Cricketers. This being said he has not done badly for himself this year. He represents one of the four players in our overall top ten who do not represent their national team but is the only one who has not bolstered their points with an extended spell in the County Championship. The player, if selected, may continue this into 2019. He confirmed his involvement in the PSL this week and will, again inevitably, turn up to the IPL and put himself in the shop window yet again for another year of globe-trotting and money grabbing.

Week

Nathan Lyon - 350
Shaun Marsh- 254
Shakib Al Hasan - 230
Quinton De Kock- 170
Mitchell Marsh- 170
Kane Williamson - 140
Simon Harmer -114
Sunil Narine - 105
Jofra Archer - 90
AB De Villiers- 82
Hashim Amla - 71
Aaron Finch - 57
Rashid Khan - 31 
George Bailey - 28
Dean Elgar- 9 
Virat Kohli - 4
Ravi Ashwin- dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
JP Duminy - dnp 
Ravi Jadeja - dnp 
Jeetan Patel - dnp 
Joe Root - dnp 
Steve Smith - dnp 
David Warner - dnp 

Overall

Simon Harmer - 6944
Rashid Khan - 5586
Jeetan Patel - 5311
Jos Buttler - 4424
Virat Kohli- 4373
Jofra Archer - 4303
Joe Root - 4127
Sunil Narine- 4043
Aaron Finch - 3864
Kane Williamson - 3684
Ravi Ashwin - 3370
Nathan Lyon - 3326
Ravi Jadeja - 3263
Shakib Al Hasan - 3106
Mitchell Marsh - 2663
Quinton de Kock - 2519
JP Duminy - 2496
Shaun Marsh- 2356
Dean Elgar- 2293
AB De Villiers- 2191
Hashim Amla - 2162
David Warner - 1401
Steve Smith - 1350
George Bailey - 1115

Jofra Archer - The Best Cricketer of the Week

A wise man once said: "The only thing I knew how to do was keep on keeping on."

Another wise man once said if you quote Bob Dylan a lot you get to be England selector...but that is beside the point.

Jofra Archer has been taking a leaf out of Bob's book by keeping on throughout a myriad of trials and tribulations throughout 2018. An impressive debut BBL was followed up by injury and a less than exhilarating IPL bow. This was coupled with speculation regarding if and when he would be allowed to play international cricket. Away from the glitz and glamour of franchise cricket, Archer has used the more parochial surroundings of Hove to have his best week of the year so far and claim his inaugural Cricketer of the Week. He was instrumental in Sussex's demolition of Gloucestershire and claimed eight wickets and 319 points. His season has mirrored the point scoring prowess of another Divison One bowler who had a good week this week - Jeetan Patel. Both players have had long spells out of the game but then boosted their points in sudden bursts up the table. Jofra's most recent burst has seen him overtake Kane Williamson and get back into the top ten. If it were not for those injuries heaven knows where the Barbados born man would have been on the overall table. He has also taken the opportunity this week to join the Karachians team for this year's T10 Cricket League ......which is.....nice.

I have highlighted the tussle between Joe Root and Virat Kohli for the last three weeks now and in so many ways it is all equal. In the first two weeks of his team's tour of England, Kohli came out marginally on top despite both men performing badly. Last week saw Root's utter dominance and this week a strong wicket taking performance for the England Test captain sees him get the better of Kohli's performance in a warm up against Essex. This sees the two men tied at 2-2 as we approach the Test series. Another way in which the two men are all tied up is in their positions in the overall table. Despite just 88 points from the Essex game, Kohli managed to leapfrog Finch and claim 7th place - right behind Root. It is all to play for as we get to the main courses of this Summer's cricketing feast.

I want to draw your attention to another battle between an English Test player and an Asian superstar which may play out over the next month. The Summer of Jos Buttler has seen the short form superstar return to the Test fold and storm up the overall league. In contrast the year seemed to belong to Rashid Khan until the start of the summer where he has dramatically dropped in form and subsequently down the table. This can be seen below in line graph form (probably my favourite form of all) where each point of the graph represents Rashid or Buttler's average score per month. As you can see it seems like the two players can't be in form at the same time.

Where the England player may expect to do some damage against India, Rashid is struggling for consistency at Sussex which may very well see him drop into fourth position soon enough. However all is not doom and gloom for the Afghanistan spinner as he has been signed up by the Maratha Arabians for this year's T10 Cricket League ......which is.....nice.

More players picked up points this week compared to last - and one returning player was JP Duminy who has not played since his Mumbai Indians team were knocked out of the IPL over a month ago. He is joining up with a group of South African players who are in a rather poor spell of form, which is represented very well by our four active South African selections. The Sri Lanka Test Series was a very disappointing one for the South African team in general as can be seen by the points accumulated by those that featured. It will be Hashim Amla who will be most disappointed with a yield of just 184 from two Tests and a warm up ODI this week. Dean Elgar whose 202 is only marginally better only played the two Tests whilst Quinton De Kock was the best scoring Saffer with just 205 from the three games. The fact that De Kock's points saw him overtake Mitchell Marsh, a player who has been pointless for the last 15 weeks, shows the poor state of affairs South Africa find themselves in. Out of the six South African players in our 24 it is the retired AB De Villiers that has the most points followed by JP Duminy who has only featured in fifteen of the thirty gameweeks. Sixteenth placed Amla, Elgar in seventeenth and nineteenth placed De Kock need to up their game quickly lest South Africa's rankings drop beyond recognition. Perhaps the fact that none of them have signed on to the T10 league explains their despondency.

Week

Jofra Archer - 414
Jeetan Patel - 317
Shakib Al Hasan - 278
Joe Root - 190
Jos Buttler - 112
Quinton de Kock - 110
Dean Elgar - 92
Kane Williamson - 90
JP Duminy- 89
Virat Kohli- 88
Aaron Finch - 85
Hashim Amla - 41
Ravi Ashwin - 35
Ravi Jadeja - 25
George Bailey - dnp
AB De Villiers- dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Rashid Khan - dnp
Nathan Lyon - dnp
Mitchell Marsh- dnp
Shaun Marsh - dnp
Sunil Narine - dnp
Steve Smith- dnp
David Warner - dnp

Overall

Simon Harmer - 4298
Jeetan Patel - 3899
Rashid Khan - 3463
Jos Buttler - 3413
Sunil Narine- 2974
Joe Root - 2881
Virat Kohli- 2789
Aaron Finch - 2774
Jofra Archer - 2533
Kane Williamson -2501
Shakib Al Hasan - 2332
AB De Villiers- 2010
Ravi Ashwin - 1855
Nathan Lyon - 1833
JP Duminy - 1826
Hashim Amla - 1708
Dean Elgar- 1686
Shaun Marsh- 1498
Quinton de Kock - 1497
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
Ravi Jadeja - 1226
David Warner - 1011
Steve Smith - 965
George Bailey - 631