Abdur Razzak - The Best Cricketer of the Week....again

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

Simon Harmer - The Best Cricketer of the Week

I am limited in who I can write about this week with only 9 of our 24 in action. I am going to direct myself towards some duos who have impressed. 

A pair I return to regularly is the County Championship's Simon Harmer and Jeetan Patel. Harmer has escaped from his Royal London One Day Cup malaise and returned to his big scoring ways in the four day game against Yorkshire. His yield of 393 is his highest for a month and sees him named Cricketer of the Week yet again. He has also overtaken Rashid Khan whose 89 points this week sees him fall back to second - 199 points behind his South African rival. With no Afghanistan fixtures forthcoming, this could be Harmer's chance to force the lead to an unattainable level as the English summer progresses. Jeetan Patel is another player who is rapidly climbing up the table. His 218 points this week puts clear daylight between him and fourth place Sunil Narine. With the West Indian spinner not playing for a fortnight in which Warwickshire play three fixtures, the top three could really draw away as we approach July. 

Which players have impressed the most in England matches this week? Callum McLeod? Shaun Marsh? Moeen Ali? From our list it is two unlikely beneficiaries who sit sixth and seventh in the weekly league. Joe Root has been comparatively quiet this week but his 201 is his highest weekly yield since Week 11 when he was playing warm up matches against a New Zealand XI. Whilst we have been more used to seeing him pick up points for his bowling of late, it is refreshing to see the England Test captain back in the driving seat with the bat - and all with healthy run rates. Whilst he is neither winning nor deciding games he is contributing. On the other side of that particular coin is Jos Buttler. This week he scored 31 points less than Joe Root (albeit playing one fewer game) but his performance in yesterday's ODI was both decisive and match- winning. His ability to get big scores is a trait he has carried over from his IPL campaign and he is using it to great effect against the Aussies. The Englishmen sit in 8th and 5th place respectively in the overall rankings. 

He has had a torrid season of it so far but Shaun Marsh's Week was undoubtably his best of 2018. It is always good when one of the lower ranked players overall pops his head up near the top of the weekly rankings and we have seen that this week from the Australian batsman. Nineteenth out of twenty four in the overall league, Marsh's 155 in two games sees him finish 5th this week. Consistency is the watch word for Marsh. This century is his first for Australia since 2013. He'll need to pick up the pace in order to escape the bottom of our table. Marsh's team mate, Aaron Finch, has proved that his big scoring Week last time out was something of a blip. This week his score of 19 is back to his most recent form of pretty unimpressive batting. He has found himself sliding down the order for Australia and might find his place under pressure on the form of this week. The fact that the Australian team has only two competing players from our list has shown the huge effect that the ball tampering scandal has had on the ODI side. Whilst Marsh and Finch's weeks were both markedly different, the fact that Messrs. Smith and Warner are gearing up for the inaugural Global T20 Canada league means they should probably be counting their blessings. 

Starting the week in uncharacteristically poor positions, the Indian spin twins of Ravi Ashwin and Ravi Jadeja took advantage of a very green looking Afghanistan to claim 458 between them. With 240 points, Jadeja has pulled off a Shaun Marsh-style performance of his own and managed to place second this week despite being bottom of the overall table (if you discount currently inactive players.) This really does go against his disappointing performances this year for Saurashtra and Chennai. When Jadeja is representing India he steps it up in a way that he struggles to in domestic cricket. Overall he really does find himself off the pace and is bottom of a pile of four players between 1200 and 1300 points and a long way off Mitchell Marsh in 17th. Another Indian player who would be disappointed with his overall ranking is 12th placed Ashwin. Despite scoring less than Jadeja this week, he has improved his overall position more than any other player. His 218 points saw him overtaking Hashim Amla, Dean Elgar, Finch, Shakib Al Hasan and Mitchell Marsh in what is a very close middle of the table. It remains to be seen whether these two senior figures will play a huge part in the upcoming Irish games but Ashwin is ideally placed for a big push in the forthcoming series against England. 

Jeetan Patel - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Why spin bowlers do so well in these rankings proves elusive to me. Jeetan Patel is the third spin bowler after Nathan Lyon and Simon Harmer to sit atop the table for cricketer of the week. Perhaps the reason is that they keep such low economies coupled alongside, occasionally, devastating wicket taking abilities. This was certainly the case for the veteran New Zealand international in his game for Wellington this week. The very well rested player has not played a game since the 14th January and has long sat rock bottom of our overall table. This was drastically put right with a ten wicket match and a stunning 21 maidens - the highest I can remember for any player in 2018. With the County Championship just around the corner, Patel will hope to continue to put his mark on the overall table for Warwickshire. It is now Ravi Jadeja who holds the unenviable position of lowest scoring player. 

Another long absent player that had a smashing week on return was Shakib Al Hasan - however this smashing was more literal than he would have liked. After six weeks out of the game, the former table topping allrounder got 27 points but then proceeded to be involved in a high profile spell of defiance which saw the glass in the Bangladesh dressing room getting smashed. The Jessore born man has a plethora of domestic T20 games round the corner but is a mile away from the top ten due to his lengthily injury - despite this we know he is capable of inflicting big hitting deliveries on more than just glazing so we could see him edge up the table. 

It was a confusing week for two Test playing regulars. For Joe Root, this was down to the fact that he was playing practice matches against a New Zealand XI, however it is amusing to see him pick up almost as many points for his bowling as for his batting. The part time spinner looked slightly more than part time against the rather green batsmen of New Zealand's second tier. This, plus his 166 runs across two games, has seen him push into the top five of the overall table with a comfortable cushion ahead of 6th place Mitchell Marsh. The next player in his sights is Sunil Narine, who is expected to have a spell out of the game once the PSL finishes this week. If Root keeps up this pressure he will move even further up the table. 

Any casual observer of Test cricket will say that strike rate is not where the players are likely to pick up too many of their points. AB De Villiers has been the exception to this in the Second Test. In a Test series that has seen no player pull away from the pack in a dramatic fashion, De Villiers was prolific with both runs scored (154) and strike rates (86.30 and 107.69). This has seen him pick up 214 - his highest score for a week by some margin - and place him as the highest South African international on the overall league. He is in massive form since his international comeback with five 50s in 10 innings and rightly deserves to be ascending the table. 

No doubt the South Africa- Australia Test series is proving entertaining - but it is also throwing up some unlikely high scorers. From just this week's table we see the aforementioned AB De Villiers at the top of the table, alongside Nathan Lyon and the unassuming Mitchell Marsh. Down at the other end of the table we see (perhaps expectedly) Shaun Marsh but then followed by Steve Smith and Dean Elgar. This has very much been a Test series geared up for the allrounder rather than the prolific runscorer. In fact the word prolific is not an adjective you would associate with either Steve Smith or Dean Elgar in 2018 - who have both looked unassuming compared to their heroics of 2017. This is reflected in their positions in the bottom third of the overall table. 

Week

Jeetan Patel - 436
Joe Root - 361
Rashid Khan - 234
AB De Villiers- 214
Nathan Lyon - 167
JP Duminy - 134
Mitchell Marsh - 124
Sunil Narine - 116
Hashim Amla - 103
David Warner - 96
Quinton de Kock- 89
Dean Elgar - 82 
Ravi Ashwin - 68
Steve Smith- 56
George Bailey - 46
Shakib Al Hasan - 27
Aaron Finch - 25
Shaun Marsh - 25
Jofra Archer - dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
Simon Harmer - dnp 
Ravi Jadeja - dnp 
Virat Kohli - dnp 
Kane Williamson - dnp 

Overall

Rashid Khan - 1758
JP Duminy - 1659
Simon Harmer - 1593
Sunil Narine- 1450
Joe Root - 1308
Mitchell Marsh - 1245
Virat Kohli- 1231
Nathan Lyon - 1225
Jos Buttler - 1026
Aaron Finch - 999
Kane Williamson -906
Ravi Ashwin - 878
AB De Villiers- 778
Quinton de Kock - 670
David Warner - 650
Steve Smith - 633
Shakib Al Hasan - 635
Hashim Amla - 598
George Bailey - 560
Dean Elgar- 557
Jofra Archer - 550
Jeetan Patel - 544
Shaun Marsh- 506
Ravi Jadeja - 412