Nathan Lyon - The Best Cricketer of the Week (Again)

The Sheffield Shield is one of the strongest domestic leagues in the cricketing world. There are not many cricket boards who would consider letting their national stars have a run out at their home clubs as suitable preparation for the arrival of India; however Cricket Australia, in their infinite wisdom, have done so. This has worked for Nathan Lyon and Mitchell Marsh who finish first and fifth in the weekly table. It is Nathan Lyon's second consecutive week in the top spot and he is going to pose a real threat to the dodgy Indian openers. He has now bagged 16 wickets in two innings with an average economy of 3.1. His two chart topping weeks has seen the New South Welshman pick up 683 in the last fortnight and leapfrog fellow spinners Ravi Jadeja and Ravi Ashwin into 11th place. The battle between these three spinners will be a real treat for fans of that form of bowling. With the three of them all sandwiched within 356 points of each other it should make for a very interesting sideshow as the year slides to a close. Next in Lyon's sights in the overall league is fellow antipodean Kane Williamson, who he could overhaul with a successful series against India. Could Lyon finish in the top ten after all? 

The United Arab Emirate's cricketing vanity project continues to roll on and it is, as ever, very hard to judge the quality of contributions in the shortest and most insignificant format. One thing we can judge is the huge variability of performances that can be pulled out of the bag by players and teams. Sunil Narine got 103 points in the first week of the performance but then brought his A game (or his A game was bought) for Bengal as he clocked up 319 this week. In his four games this week he got three scores over twenty and bagged a strike rate of forty for all of them, helping him to his highest score since February. We have always known that, when called upon, Narine can be ruthless with the bat and he has really proved that this week. It must have been a very good week for the West Indian's bank balance after news has emerged that he has been retained, for a bigger salary, by Kolkata in the IPL. Overall mission accomplished. Rashid Khan has also shown erratic form in the T10 league. He has only got six wickets to show from 6 games this week but his economies highlight the variable nature of the tournament. He started the week with an economy of 3.5 against Rajputs and ended it this afternoon with 19.5 against Bengal - stopping off at every increment of three along the way. To attend one of this games must be jolly good fun but form or talent means next to nothing in the soulless core of cricket. 

There is precious little time in this year's cricketing calendar and time may be up on Hashim Amla to escape the fate of winning the notional wooden spoon. Amla will not be rock bottom of our overall league but it has been an unusual year for the bottom three in the table. George Bailey is now semi-retired and Steve Smith and David Warner....did ...something....I can't remember....it wasn't very well publicised. So if you remove those three from the equation there sits Hashim Amla whose year started mediocre and has slid into dire. In the first 21 weeks of the year the average score for the veteran South African was 72.57 a week. He ended this spell with 241 points and with a brief period away from the game. He came back in Week 28 and has since scored 24.14 a week. One of the lowest averages of any player to have played more than five weeks. In his debut season in the Mzansi Super League he has scored an average of 13.75 off the bat to continue his poor form that began for South Africa, moved with him to the CPL and may well now haunt him into 2019. With just four more posts before the names on the list switch might this be the undignified end to Amla's spell in the echelons of the very top players? 

Week

Nathan Lyon - 333
Sunil Narine- 319 
Virat Kohli - 245
Rashid Khan - 228
Mitchell Marsh- 136
Dean Elgar - 129
George Bailey - 121
Aaron Finch - 119
Ravi Ashwin - 115
Shaun Marsh- 111
Jos Buttler - 110
Simon Harmer - 110
Kane Williamson - 88
Jofra Archer - 80
ABDV - 70
Quinton De Kock- 61
Joe Root - 53
Ravi Jadeja- 40
Hashim Amla- 14
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
JP Duminy- dnp 
Jeetan Patel - dnp
Steve Smith - dnp 
David Warner - dnp 


Overall

Simon Harmer - 7054
Rashid Khan - 5814
Jeetan Patel - 5311
Virat Kohli- 4618
Jos Buttler - 4534
Jofra Archer - 4383
Sunil Narine- 4362
Joe Root - 4180
Aaron Finch - 3983
Kane Williamson - 3772
Nathan Lyon - 3659
Ravi Ashwin - 3485
Ravi Jadeja - 3303
Shakib Al Hasan - 3106
Mitchell Marsh - 2799
Quinton de Kock - 2580
JP Duminy - 2496
Shaun Marsh- 2467
Dean Elgar- 2422
AB De Villiers- 2261
Hashim Amla - 2176
David Warner - 1401
Steve Smith - 1350
George Bailey - 1236

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