Pathum Nissanka - The Best Cricketer of the Week

 

A full compliment of T20 World Cup players this week with nobody featuring outside of that competition.

Weekly Top 5

1. Pathum Nissanka - 282 - Was looking worryingly out of nick up to this point of the year but burst into life with a century and a half century against Australia and Zimbabwe. When he is at his best, there are few better.

2. Aiden Markram - 214 - Continuing his fine spell of form with 114 runs scored over two T20 games....impressively he did better against the Test nation than he did the Associate.

3. Sam Curran - 213 - Not doing anything phenomenal (few English players are) but he is doing just enough with both bat and ball to feature in the weekly Top 5 for the second week in a row.

4. Travis Head - 168 - Something of a case of too little too late for the stand-in Aussie captain as he saved two decent performances for when his team were already on the brink. 27 points in the first two weeks and 168 in the last says it all.

5. Rachin Ravindra- 142 - Nothing like a knock against an Associate side to build confidence. RR is having a torrid time this year but bagged his first half century against Canada to see him pip into the Top 5 for the week.

Overall Top 5

1. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi - 1302 - Despite the points spraying around in the T20 World Cup, for Vaibhav to still have a 200+ lead is really something special.

2. Quinton De Kock - 1085- A comparatively quiet week for QDK. He is now looking over his shoulder rather than into the distance as he has a lead of just 28 off third.

3. Sam Curran - 1057 - Despite being one of the highest point scorers this week, Curran is unable to move out of bronze medal position. Still games to play for him though.

4. Aiden Markram - 1041 - Despite his big points haul this week, he does not manage to move out of fourth spot. There is a huge gulf between himself and fifth, the largest anywhere on the List.

5. Harry Brook - 764 - A disappointing week does not see Brook lose his fifth placed position. 42 points sperate him from Saim Ayub in 6th.

Highest Weekly Average


1. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi = 260.4
2.Ravindra Jadeja = 181.33
3. Nat Sciver-Brunt = 177.75

Good Week for Pathum Nissanka; up 24.9 points to 102.57. Bad week for Harry Brook; down 17.87 to 127.33.

Highest Average Points per Game

Red Ball- Simon Harmer = 248.5
One Day - Vaibhav Sooryavanshi = 108.5
Short Form - Nat Sciver-Brunt = 101.57

Highest Points by Format

* =New Name

Red Ball- Simon Harmer = 248.5
One Day - Vaibhav Sooryavanshi - 1302
Short Form - Quinton De Kock = 1085

Highest Points by Discipline

Runs - Vaibhav Sooryavanshi - 742
Batting Bonus - Vaibhav Sooryavanshi- 170
Strike Rate - Vaibhav Sooryavanshi - 280

Wickets - Marco Jansen = 360
Wicket Bonus = Sam Curran = 60
Economy - Simon Harmer= 100

Fielding - Quinton de Kock = 190
Fielding Bonus - Marco Jansen, Harry Brook, Quinton de Kock + Michael Bracewell = 10

Weekly List In Full

Pathum Nissanka 282
Aiden Markram 214
Sam Curran 213
Travis Head 168
Rachin Ravindra 142
Saim Ayub 140
Marco Jansen 100
Quinton de Kock 74
Phil Salt 70
Liam Dawson 50
Harry Brook 38
Jos Buttler 36

Overall List In Full

Vaibhav Sooryavanshi 1302
Quinton de Kock 1085
Sam Curran 1057
Aiden Markram 1041
Harry Brook 764
Saim Ayub 722
Pathum Nissanka 718
Nat Sciver-Brunt 711
Marco Jansen 676
Jos Buttler 625
Ravindra Jadeja 544
Travis Head 510
Simon Harmer 497
Rachin Ravindra 449
Liam Dawson 397
Phil Salt 291
Shubman Gill 240
Sophie Ecclestone 226
Mehidy Hasan Miraz 218
Nicholas Pooran 192
Michael Bracewell 184

Virat Kohli - The Best Cricketer of the Week

I stumbled across a website this week that tells you all the words that entered the dictionary on the year of your birth (trust me it is more interesting than it sounds) - for those born in 2018 I would suggest the verb 'to Kohli' should be featured on that site. For me Kohli-ing is repeatedly performing a seemingly impossible feat twice in close succession. This is a talent that the estimable Virat has performed numerous times but none more startlingly than his two mammoth hundreds against West Indies this week. Last time out I referred to ODIs being Kohli's favoured format but the idea of him scoring 417 points in a week was not in my wildest dreams. This is the India captain's highest weekly total of 2018 but the second time that he has scored over 400 points - the first time was back in January where he won Cricketer of the Week for the first time for his performances in the ODIs against South Africa. This was not the only threshold he passed this week. He also passes 4000 points in our overall table and leapfrogs both Sunil Narine and Jos Buttler to claim fourth place. There is also the small matter of him surpassing the 10,000 run mark in ODIs. He is now going to have a couple of dormant weeks as he is going to be rested for the T20 series but I think he has more than picked up the slack with his performances this week. 

Simon Harmer has been something of a fan favourite on these posts. The unlikely leader of our Top 24 still continues to impress after returning to his homeland. In the last fortnight he has signed on to one of the franchises in the new Mzansi Super League and has also claimed his 500th wicket this week in the Warriors shock win against the Dolphins. Whilst he has not impressed with either bat or ball, his economies and maidens have seen him take second spot this week. This is something I feel needs to be addressed. In no way to detract from Harmer or Jeetan Patel's achievements this year but the two players, who sit first and third in the overall table, benefit hugely from economy rates in long ball cricket. This has caused me to rethink how I will calculate points next year when we select a whole new batch of players to monitor for 2019. I intend to drop the five points allocated to each bowler for a maiden over. This was originally put in as a way of boosting bowlers points against batsmen but has, arguably, gone too far. This would not have huge effects on the success of most players most weeks. Harmer's 220 points this week would be recalculated to a (still fairly decent) 175 - however what it would stop is players who are overly reliant on stifling economies and boosting their overall weekly score. This is something that the likes of Sunil Narine and Nathan Lyon have profited from in the past. Lyon, last week's champion, got 353 points with 65 points from maidens and then doubled that with a further 60 points for two economy rates below 4.0. This new rule should cancel out the dominance we have seen from a certain type of bowler this year whilst still making the Harmers and Patels of this world a worthwhile selection. 

Maybe Aaron Finch is trying to prove a point. Maybe he's broken. Maybe he's tried to recalibrate and has done so with a phenomenal success rate. Whatever the answer is one thing is for sure; he is desperate to bury his label as someone whose batting style is not fit for Test cricket. And so desperate has been to redress this point that, after a promising Test debut from a personal perspective, he has followed it up with some absolutely dire performances in the T20 series. This week Finch scored 4 runs in three innings against the UAE and Australia. His weekly score looks much improved with some impressive performances in the field but, my god, Finch does look good as a Test batsmen now. This strategy has turned heads and England's Jos Buttler, another player to be labelled a short form Cricketer alone, went out and scored a duck this week. This means, through a combination of precipitation and ineptitude, the wicket keeper batsman has managed to hide his big hitting light under a bushel and scored a combined total of 28 runs across the five ODI series against Sri Lanka. If being bad at 50 over cricket is the key to Test success, I expect my call up any day now.