Shubman Gill - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Here, at the early point of the year, one strong week can see you shoot up the table; taking you from a nowhere man to a challenger. Shubman Gill has had one of those weeks. And he is capable of them. Last year he bagged Cricketer of the Week twice out of nowhere, whilst the likes of Jos Buttler and Kane Williamson ended with none. One of the biggest criticism is his lack of consistency; at times he can look like a world beater but at other times he looks just a jot above average. Before this week he averaged 26.2 with the bat across four matches in 2020 - three against New Zealand A and one Ranji Trophy game. His form was tepid - and it was telling that when Rohit Sharma got injured his name was not even in the frame for a call up despite the fact that it was evident that the replacement was bound to come from the India A team. It was only early February and Gill was already in 17th position - one place off bottom, a placing he was used to throughout 2019. Then he turned his eye to the longest form of the game and got 287 in the first Unofficial Test against New Zealand A and rocketed up the table with his highest ever score since we have been tracking his performances. He now finds his way into the top ten for the first time ever and there is another Test being played as we speak. The problem is Gill struggles to keep his foot on the accelerator. In order to be a major player in this list and in world cricket he needs to eradicate this lack of consistency from his game and be a more ruthless figure. Only time will tell.

Why it happens we will never know, but for the last three years of monitoring the top players in the world Virat Kohli and Joe Root just won't leave each other alone. Week after week and month after month we see the captains of India and England sandwiched together, most often in the overall list but also in the weekly list. This week they both end up in the top five with Root finishing second and Kohli in fifth. On the overall list it is a similar picture with Root in third and Kohli 60 points behind him in 4th. It is not just in point accumulation that these two players are similar. Both seem to be able to grind out a good amount of points very regularly whilst looking unassuming. This week Joe Root got 91 in a warm up match and 17 in the first ODI against South Africa whilst Kohli got 51 and 15 in two ODIs against New Zealand. Solid but not electric - but the two still regularly pick up three figure scores and end in the weekly top five through their consistency. So far this year only three players have scored 100 in four weeks or more: Kohli, Root and Martin Guptill. In the same way as I criticise Gill for not being able to produce Week in Week out, I must laud Kohli and Root for their consistently decent performances.

Keshav Maharaj is one of the most unknown prospects on this year's list. He is the latest in a long list of South African bowlers that we have kept our eye on over the course of these posts. Obviously the most successful was Simon Harmer but last year's inclusion of Duanne Olivier and Morne Morkel proved a little far off the mark. Already in 2020, Maharaj has had some decent performances (a five wicket haul against England for instance) but also some weeks where he has been inactive including missing the final Test. This week he had another decent outing in a different form of the game - getting 143 points and finishing fourth for the week thanks to two Momentum One Day Cup games for the Dolphins. Despite some strong performances, Maharaj has yet to breech the top ten, reaching a high of eleventh the week before last and then returning there this week. Maharaj is undoubtably a talent but he needs to be playing regularly. He could rack up a decent amount of points during the One Day Cup but that could be it for him until he links up with Yorkshire in the County Championship. This being said, with South Africa's next Test series not until July there could be a long spell away from the action for the spinner. The dynamic (semi) all rounder needs to score big whilst the sun shines for fear he may end up as another Saffer damp squib.

Week

Shubman Gill - 377
Joe Root - 188
Martin Guptill- 153
Keshav Maharaj- 143
Virat Kohli- 116
Rohit Sharma- 100
Lewis Gregory - 75
Steve Smith - 61
Tom Banton- 51
Glenn Maxwell - 49
Peter Handscomb - 26

Kyle Abbott - dnp
Colin Ackermann - dnp
Babar Azam- dnp
Aaron Finch- dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Travis Head - dnp
Jason Holder - dnp
Marnus Labuschagne- dnp
Mohammad Nabi - dnp
Ben Stokes - dnp
David Warner - dnp

Overall

Ben Stokes - 809
Martin Guptill - 781
Joe Root - 760
Virat Kohli - 700
Steve Smith - 662
Glenn Maxwell - 650
Marnus Labuschagne - 649
Mohammad Nabi - 590
Shubman Gill - 568
Aaron Finch - 558
Keshav Maharaj - 530
Rohit Sharma - 471
Travis Head - 458
David Warner - 392
Tom Banton - 327
Lewis Gregory - 281
Peter Handscomb - 239
Babar Azam - 116

Shakib Al Hasan - The Best Cricketer of the Week

They who like cricket were royally entertained last week with competitions scattered all over the globe in all format. No matter your Domestic or national allegiance there was a game which caught your fancy. The eyes of the cricketing world were inevitably drawn towards England against India - no mean feat for a format which has allegedly been dying for as long as I can remember - however it was away from this spotlight and this format that we see two returning goliaths of this game top scoring for the week. Shakib Al Hasan was the first Cricketer to score back to back Cricketer of the Week accolades before injury led to an underwhelming second quarter of the year. This week his team faced up against West Indies four times (one ODI and three T20Is). The Bangladesh captain was solid in all four games but his piece De resistance came in the second T20I where he scored 60 and bagged two wickets. Overall the player got 140 runs and three wickets but many a point was picked up for economies and strike rates to see him seal top spot for the week. Hasan is joined at the top of the weekly tree by a player who was very much in the mix in the first quarter of the year before likewise dropping away. JP Duminy's Momentum One Day Cup form for the Warriors was exquisite before a break from the game and an underwhelming IPL season saw him slide down the table. On his return to One Day cricket for South Africa he has returned to form with 177 runs to his name in the series against Sri Lanka. Out of all the names on our list it is Duminy who gets the most of his runs in the One Day format. Whilst Harmer and Patel are staples of the Long form stuff, Rashid and Buttler more for the short form and Kohli and Williamson straddling all formats, it is only Duminy who exclusively relies on One Day cricket for his star studded performances. He is the last of a dying breed. Despite the impressive performances from these two men, there has not been a huge amount of forward momentum in the overall table. Shakib remains in eleventh place with an 153 point gap up to Jofra Archer in tenth, whilst Duminy moves up two places to thirteenth. 

I find it hard to adjudicate on who has won the Root v Kohli battle this week. For pedants out there you can't help but say that Root won due to the fact that his team did. Despite this, Kohli's 270 points compared to Root's 114 coupled with Kohli overtaking the England captain again and seizing sixth place overall surely puts the Indian back in the driving seat. One thing that is for sure is that it is as tight as anything on the overall table with Kohli ahead by a mere 9 runs. With the competition between the two men very much represented in the matches themselves, it makes the next 4 Tests very interesting indeed. 

Rashid Khan and Jos Buttler are like ET and Elliot in reverse. If you remember from the tear-jerking and frankly terrifying Steven Spielberg classic , the young man and his extra-terrestrial friend were intractably linked - in this cricketing variant, whenever the Afghanistan player plays well the English player is bound to flop and vice versa. This theory posited last week has been writ large this week where the Sussex Spinner's return to form saw him get his first three figure score in eight weeks. In reply, the Englishman scored a measly one point in the first test against India. With Rashid signing an extension of his contract at Sussex, England fans up and down the land will be wishing nothing but ill will on the young Afghanistan prodigy so that the Test team can turn round their weak middle order. 

The cricketing week has been so dense that if I wrote in detail about all the remarkable performances this post would be delayed even further than it has been. Needless to say in normal weeks we would have focused on such things as:

Aaron Finch and Jofra Archer's continued dominance of the T20 Blast with bat and ball respectively
Ravi Ashwin's hatfull of wickets against England 
Kane Williamson's two man of the match performances for Yorkshire
Quinton de Kock's dramatic return to form for South Africa as he prepares to join Hampshire.

But on a week where no fewer than eight players scored over 200 points one has to be selective. One interesting thing to see is that, despite this high scoring week, the overall table has shown very little movement. At the very top of the table we've seen some incredibly large gaps between players. This allows for dramatically high scoring weeks to only make relatively small dents in the overall table. Or more correctly, it used to. Due to this big scoring week we now see the largest gap on the overall table at a mere 399 between Ravi Ashwin and JP Duminy in tenth and eleventh. Closer to the top of the table there is now just 366 points between Jeetan Patel and Rashid Khan in second and third and 357 between Buttler and Finch in fourth and fifth. These are the three biggest gaps on the overall table. We may see some rather drastic musical chairs in the coming few weeks. 

Week

Shakib Al Hasan - 350
JP Duminy- 337
Ravi Ashwin - 328
Kane Williamson - 298 
Quinton de Kock - 296
Aaron Finch - 283
Virat Kohli - 270
Jofra Archer - 202
Hashim Amla - 191
Rashid Khan - 156
Joe Root - 114
Jeetan Patel - 86
Simon Harmer - 31
Jos Buttler - 1
George Bailey - dnp 
AB De Villiers - dnp 
Dean Elgar- dnp 
Ravi Jadeja - dnp 
Nathan Lyon - dnp 
Mitchell Marsh - dnp 
Shaun Marsh - dnp 
Sunil Narine- dnp 
Steve Smith - dnp 
David Warner - dnp 

Overall

Simon Harmer - 4329
Jeetan Patel - 3985
Rashid Khan - 3619
Jos Buttler - 3414
Aaron Finch - 3057
Virat Kohli- 3009
Joe Root - 2995
Sunil Narine- 2974
Kane Williamson -2799
Jofra Archer - 2735
Shakib Al Hasan - 2582
Ravi Ashwin - 2183
JP Duminy - 2163
AB De Villiers- 2010
Hashim Amla - 1899
Nathan Lyon - 1833
Quinton de Kock - 1793
Dean Elgar- 1686
Shaun Marsh- 1498
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
Ravi Jadeja - 1226
David Warner - 1011
Steve Smith - 965
George Bailey - 631

Shakib Al Hasan - The Best Cricketer of the Week...again

His timing has been nothing short of incredible. Two weeks ago Shakib Al Hasan sat at the bottom of the table with 0 points. Two weeks later he sits atop the weekly total for the second week running and is only behind JP Duminy overall. The common bond that both these players share is the sheer amount of games they have played in over a comparatively short period of time. Shakib and Duminy have squeezed in five games over the last fortnight which sees them both riding high on the table. With the likes of Joe Root and Aaron Finch about to complete their fifth ODI of the year just behind them, they do seem to have s comfortable lead. 

Jofra Archer and Rashid Khan, the wunderkinds of bowling, appear to be unable to operate in tandem. When one of them is in the ascendancy the other underperforms. Last week Archer squeezed into the top ten performers of the week whilst Khan crapped out with a round zero. This week the pair have switched places with Rashid sixth in the table with his five wickets in a week for the Adelaide Strikers, whilst Jofra Archer's paltry 31 points comes from one wicket and a handful of runs in his two games for the now eliminated Hobart Hurricanes. Their relative inconsistency puts them side by side in the overall table just outside the top ten, with Archer claiming a five point lead on his Afghanistani rival. 

His performances have not been spoken about with lofty tones in the ODI series between Australia and England, but Mitchell Marsh has been performing solidly for the home side. His above average performances with both bat and ball place him in good stead in the table but he is also going the extra mile with his batting and bowling bonus points with 90 of his 212 points this week coming from strike rate, economy and batting bonus points. He will also have cause to feel hard done by due to the manner of his dismissals in both games this week - sent back for 55 and 32 on the receiving end of some outstandingly high quality return catches. 

It seems to be a growing trend of these posts but we are, again, seeing some players we would have expected big things from hugely underperforming. Steve Smith and David Warner have been on this list all January and are only getting themselves deeper into bother. Warner's yield of 21 points from two games - all from runs - is particularly eye opening. AB De Villiers is a player we can join to their ranks this week. He underperformed in the last Test against India and walked away with just 31 runs - 20 of which came from opportunities in the field. Root was also underwhelming this week - only turning up in one of the ODI and getting out for 27. He finds himself outside of the top five of the week for the first time.

Two players who are on a fairly steep upward curve this week, albeit from a pretty dire base level, are George Bailey and Hashim Amla. Both players scored more in the last week than their total runs up to this point in the year. Bailey finally turned it on for Hobart (too late some would add) with two scores in the thirties and with a very healthy strike rate to boot - especially against the Melbourne Stars where he got a 20 ball 32. Amla also did well with cumulative runs of 113 in his two innings in the final Test against India.  This puts these players into the top ten for the week and drags Amla into a bunch of South African players in the middle of the overall table. 

Shakib Al Hassan - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Battling against adversity is one of the signs of a good sportsperson. This is especially needed if you are a cricketer representing a nation outside the top four Test playing nations. Your games are fewer and further between than if you represent one of the big four nations, meaning that when patches of games do come along you have to hit form straight away. Shakib Al Hassan has done just that. At the start of the week he was one of just three players from our list to have not played in 2018. By the end of the week he finds himself seventh in the overall points. From his two games in the Tri-series against Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka, the Bangladeshi All-rounder bagged 6 wickets and a total of 104 runs. It seems fitting that he ended this stellar week receiving the news that he will enter the IPL auction as one of the marquee signings with a base price of RS 2 Crore. Shakib's form is on the up. 

Which brings us to two bowlers whose form has reversed this week. Rashid Khan has been decelerating week by week since the start of January, culminating in him receiving 0 points this week from his one game representing the Adelaide Strikers. This fruitless week sees him drop from seventh to fourteenth position overall. In a reverse situation Ravi Ashwin has bounced back from an uninspiring First Test against South Africa to get five wickets in India's second Test loss. This takes him from thirteenth to sixth position overall and makes him India's top ranking player so far in 2018. From the last week these two players appear to be heading in different directions but, if rumours are to be believed, they both could be heading to Chennai after the IPL auctions. 

Finch is another player with a dramatic turn off fortunes from week 2 to week 3. With a yield of just 2 points in the second week, he has joined up with Australia and scored back to back centuries to see him placed second in the rankings for the week and move up to third overall. He has gone from zero to hero and become the fastest player to ten ODI hundreds from Australia doing so in his 84th innings. 

With some Aussies in the ascendency, the 2018 form of two of their 2017 powerhouses has been more underwhelming. Steve Smith and David Warner have not taken to January as well as they ended 2017. Smith scored exactly 50 runs in the last 20 days of December but just 169 in the first 20 of January. Warner has a similar split of 211 to 101 and it is perhaps his form that is the most surprising as many would have expected  him to have thrived in the white ball format. They find themselves in 15th and 19th respectively and outside the top three Australians. 

Another surprise is the continual success of JP Duminy. He finds himself still flying high in the overall list and is the only player to have featured in the top six best performing players every week in January. This week he got his highest yield of points yet with scores of 71 runs and 2 wickets from his 2 games this week - his strike rate of 189.18 and a 36 run over for the Cape Cobras against the Knights being the most eye catching. 

Week

Shakib Al Hasan - 379

Aaron Finch - 303

Ravi Ashwin- 301

Joe Root - 257

JP Duminy- 241

Virat Kohli - 218

Nathan Lyon - 170

AB de Villiers - 150

Jofra Archer- 134

Kane Williamson - 134

Mitchell Marsh - 116

Hashim Amla- 113

Dean Elgar- 111

Jos Buttler - 96

Simon Harmer - 88

Steve Smith- 71

Quinton de Kock - 62

David Warner - 57

George Bailey - 56

Jeetan Patel - 50

Rashid Khan - 0

Ravi Jadeja - dnp 

Shaun Marsh - dnp 

Sunil Narine - dnp 

Overall

JP Duminy - 580

Joe Root - 483

Aaron Finch - 479

Kane Williamson - 470

Nathan Lyon - 445

Ravi Ashwin - 435

Shakib Al Hasan - 379

Jos Buttler - 356

Simon Harmer - 351

Jofra Archer - 344

AB De Villiers- 290

Mitchell Marsh - 287

Virat Kohli- 261

Rashid Khan - 225

Steve Smith - 204

Shaun Marsh- 196

Quinton de Kock - 193

Dean Elgar- 156

David Warner - 133

Hashim Amla - 120

George Bailey - 112 

Jeetan Patel - 108

Ravi Jadeja - ytp 

Sunil Narine- ytp 

Nathan Lyon - The Best Cricketer of the Week

The cosmic lords of cricket are not being kind to England at the moment. Jos Buttler, the most impressive player from last week, has joined up with the England team and his points have plummeted accordingly. He has been usurped by Nathan Lyon who began this Ashes tournament by being an unlikely aggressor and ended it with five wickets in the final Test. England fans were left wishing it wasn't him that was on the receiving end of a Bairstow hello. This, added to a wicket in his return to the BBL for the Adelaide Strikers, puts him top of the tree for Week 2 and third highest on the overall rankings. The only saving grace is that the spinner is still persona non grata for white ball cricket. 

By all accounts it has been a topsy turvy week for those players who were flying high from their BBL involvement last week. Buttler is joined by Rashid Khan and Jofra Archer - both of whom got scores in the hundreds last week but this week have been more underwhelming. The only thing that Archer can, literally, cling on to his superb return catch from Hobart Hurricanes victory over Brisbane Heat. 

The most concerning player of  the BBL bunch is George Bailey. With 16 runs from the last three matches, the Australian batsman is looking dramatically out of touch. The only saving grace for the Hobart player is his sharp performances in the field, where he is picking up more points than he has with his batting. His bad week has been further highlighted by the fact he was heavily implicated in the poor umpiring decision that marred the game against Brisbane. The only way is up for the Tasmanian.  

On the other end of the scale from the razamataz of the BBL, two of the biggest performers so far this month are exiled South Africans playing in the rather more parochial Momentum One Day Cup. Despite the success of their international kinsmen, JP Duminy and Simon Harmer are doing rather well in this tournament and have the luxury of playing twice in a week. Duminy has been especially eye catching this week with scores of 81 and 22 for the Cape Cobras. His yield of 188 points this week surprisingly puts him as the most successful cricketer from our list after two weeks of January. The make or break moment for Duminy is his return to the international fold for the ODI against India. Can he continue this form or will he fade away? 

By the time the year is up Kohli and Smith's years will feature heavily in the highlights reel but in the first fortnight they have been underwhelming. Smith and, to a lesser extent, David Warner have had their scores capped by a less than inspiring England performance that saw Australia limited to just one innings. There is no such excuse for Virat Kohli who joins Hashim Amla and Dean Elgar in a list of batsmen who are underperforming in this Test. The former two players shared 8 runs between them in the First Test with Elgar's fine form ending with a score of 25. With the Second Test underway some of these batsmen are putting themselves back on the right track but it is a rare instance indeed to see them so low in the overall rankings.  

Week 2 Totals

Nathan Lyon - 275

Joe Root- 226

Shaun Marsh- 196

JP Duminy - 188

Mitchell Marsh - 171

Kane Williamson - 152

Simon Harmer 151

AB De Villiers- 140

Ravi Ashwin - 134

Steve Smith - 133

Quinton de Kock- 131

Rashid Khan - 85

David Warner - 76

Jos Buttler - 68

Jofra Archer - 50

Dean Elgar - 45

Virat Kohli- 43

George Bailey - 35

Jeetan Patel - 26

Hashim Amla - 7

Aaron Finch- 2

Total

JP Duminy - 339

Kane Williamson- 336

Nathan Lyon - 275

Simon Harmer -263 

Jos Buttler - 260

Joe Root - 226

Rashid Khan - 225 

Jofra Archer- 210

Shaun Marsh - 196

Aaron Finch - 176 

Mitchell Marsh- 171

Ab De Villiers - 140

Ravi Ashwin - 134

Steve Smith - 133

Quinton de Kock - 131 

David Warner - 76

Jeetan Patel - 58

George Bailey - 56

Dean Elgar - 45

Virat Kohli - 43

Hashim Amla - 7 

Yet to play

Sunil Narine, Shakib Al-Hassan, Ravindra Jadeja