Vaibhav Sooryavanshi - The Best Cricketer of the Week

 

Well here we are again....and what a doozy of a week with over 2000 points scored. Let's see who leads us out.

Scores after Week 1

1. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi - 386 - Sooryavanshi, like Athapaththu before him, is a very experimental pick. Something of an unknown quantity and a very left field pick. And just like Athapaththu, he dispels those concerns by finishing first in Week 1. Very impressive debut.

2. Ravindra Jadeja - 288 - A couple of games for Saurashtra in the Vijay Hazare Trophy this week and he underlined his all rounder capabilities by scoring in 7 of the 8 point scoring categories.....just Fielding Bonus points for him left.

3. Travis Head- 262 - Had a stinker of a year last year and never reached nay higher than ninth. He is now born again as an opener and has come straight in at Number 3 for the New Year. Can he return to his 2024 peak where he finished third?

4. Harry Brook - 176 - Will want to put 2025 well behind him. He finished 10th but was a year replete with poor decision; both on and off the field. 126 runs in the final Test is enough for him to start the year on the front foot.

5. Jos Buttler - 163 - Refreshingly...and I suspect rarely....the highest T20 point score of the year only manages to sneak into the Top 5. 113 runs for Durban in the SA20 (albeit very unevenly split) also gives Buttler the best T20 average with him scoring 81 and a half points per game (a new metric for 2026)


Highest Weekly Average

Not applicable this week

Highest Average Points per Game

Red Ball- n/a
One Day - Ravindra Jadeja - 144
Short Form - Jos Buttler - 81.5

Highest Points by Format

Red Ball- Travis Head - 262
One Day - Vaibhav Sooryavanshi - 386
Short Form - Jos Buttler - 163

Highest Points by Discipline

Runs - Vaibhav Sooryavanshi - 206
Batting Bonus - Vaibhav Sooryavanshi- 50
Strike rate - Vaibhav Sooryavanshi - 70

Wickets - Ravindra Jadeja - 80
Wicket Bonus - Ravindra Jadeja - 20
Economy Saim Ayub - 30

Fielding - Vaibhav Sooryavanshi - 40
Fielding Bonus - n/a

List In Full

1 Vaibhav Sooryavanshi 386
2 Ravindra Jadeja 288
3 Travis Head 262
4 Harry Brook 176
5 Jos Buttler 163
6 Sam Curran 161
7 Quinton de Kock 149
8 Saib Ayub 144
9 Nicholas Pooran 112
10 Mehidy Hasan Miraz 109
11 Rachin Ravindra 97
12 Aiden Markram 93
13 Phil Salt 63
14 Simon Harmer 46
15 Pathum Nissanka 22
16 Shubman Gill 11
17 Marco Jansen 0
18 Liam Dawson ytp
19 Nat Sciver-Brunt ytp
20 Sophie Ecclestone ytp
21 Michael Bracewell ytp
22 Paul Walter ytp

Nicholas Pooran - The Best Cricketer of the Week

 

Final Full Weekly Top 5

1. Nicholas Pooran - 221 - We are very much in the midst of franchise cricket mania with competitions in Australia, Bangladesh, Dubai and South Africa. Pooran played four times in two of these competitions. Still 141 is a good haul for his fourth Cricketer of the Week of the year.

2. Travis Head - 220 - One point behind this week's 'best' cricketer courtesy of another huge score in another huge Ashes success. Moves up from 17th to 15th in what has otherwise been an underwhelming year.

3. Sam Curran - 166 - Just on his usual T20 grind. 66 runs and a wicket in three games in the ILT20 sees him in the Top 5 once more.

4. Kane Williamson - 161 - Finished off a Test match before kicking off a T20 tournament in South Africa ...and did pretty well in both. 91 points from the red ball game and 70 from the white ball one.

5. Jamie Smith - 152 - Probably his least disappointing disappointment across The Ashes. 82 runs and 4 contributions in the field.

Overall Top 5 with 5 days Left of the Year

1. Sam Curran -4951 - 657 point lead on second place. All but wrapped up that Curran will join Buttler as the second Englishman to win our Cricketer of the Year.

2. Nat Sciver-Brunt - 4294 - Inactive but very comfortable for a second place finish this year. The second year in a row a female cricketer has taken the silver medal.

3. Liam Dawson - 4061 - Got the indignity of a zero point week this week....but is one of the players who will be in action this week so it least he won't round of his year with a blob. Provides a slight symmetry though as his second weekly score was a zero to go along with his second to last.

4. Jos Buttler- 3972 - Had been inactive for 6 weeks and dropped from 2nd to 5th but just 60 points non Friday for Durban sees him back up a spot to 4th....89 off a bronze medal.

5.Ravindra Jadeja - 3966 - Was not part of the Indian gang that joined up to play domestic cricket in the Vijay Hazare Trophy and thus drops down a place.

Ones To Watch

Only 161 points separate Jamie Smith, Chamari Athapaththu, Travis Head, Liam Livingstone and Henrich Klaasen. All will be active over the next 5 days so all to play for,

Other Movers

Babar Azam's mini-Renaissance continues as he rises up to 15th place.

Top 3 Averages

1. Sam Curran - 150.03 (Up from 149.53)
2. Ravindra Jadeja = 136.76
3. Nat Sciver-Brunt = 136.1

Travis Head's big score sees his average improve by 4.8 ....but at 90.21 he has the fourth worst of anyone. Phil Salt's bad week sees him drop 3.4 and move down to 115.28.

Top Players By Format

Red Ball -Ravindra Jadeja= 2529
One Day - Nat Sciver Brunt = 1484
Short Form - Sam Curran 4034

Top Players by Discipline

* = New Name

Runs - Yashasvi Jaiswal = 2060
Batting Bonus - Passum Nissanka = 440
Strike Rate – Nicholas Pooran = 1010

Wickets - Liam Dawson - 1640
Wicket Bonus - Ravindra Jadeja = 200
Economy - Ravindra Jadeja = 750

Fielding - Jos Buttler = 630
Fielding Bonus - Jamie Smith, Jos Buttler & Phil Salt – 40

Weekly List In Full

Nicholas Pooran 221
Travis Head 220
Sam Curran 166
Kane Williamson 161
Jamie Smith 152
Rishabh Pant 125
Harry Brook 125
Babar Azam 110
Jasprit Bumrah 70
Chamari Athapaththu 69
Jos Buttler 60
Saim Ayub 58
Heinrich Klaasen 53
Liam Livingstone 21
Adam Zampa 18
Phil Salt 10
Suryakumar Yadav 5
Liam Dawson 0

Wanindu Hasaranga dnp
Annabel Sutherland dnp
Ravindra Jadeja dnp
Yashasvi Jaiwal dnp
Nat Sciver-Brunt dnp
Pathum Nissanka dnp

Overall Scores In Full

1 Sam Curran 4951
2 Nat Sciver-Brunt 4294
3 Liam Dawson 4061
4 Jos Buttler 3972
5 Ravindra Jadeja 3966
6 Nicholas Pooran 3848
7 Phil Salt 3689
8 Annabel Sutherland 3460
9 Yashasvi Jaiwal 3218
10 Pathum Nissanka 3109
11 Harry Brook 3021
12 Kane Williamson 2911
13 Saim Ayub 2846
14 Jamie Smith 2630
15 Babar Azam 2549
16 Chamari Athapaththu 2532
17 Travis Head 2526
18 Liam Livingstone 2496
19 Heinrich Klaasen 2487
20 Wanindu Hasaranga 2463
21 Suryakumar Yadav 2263
22 Jasprit Bumrah 2078
23 Rishabh Pant 1977
24 Adam Zampa 1576

Shubman Gill - The Best Cricketer of the Week

If you've been following the career of Shubman Gill over the last few years you will be used to his title as Indian cricket's next rising star. However the problem with rising stars is that sometimes they fade out of sight rather than bursting into life and, at times, it seemed like Shubman might pass us by and leave our orbit altogether. He has had a largely disappointing year overall and sits 18th on the overall list - however is this all his fault? Inarguably Gill is a talented Cricketer and in his last four games he has registered scores of 90 and over 3 times including his table topping performance of 143 for India C vs India A in the Deodhar Trophy this week. One needs to question, however, if the number of games he plays is hampering his progress. Gill is nominally a Punjab player however apart from a stint in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy he has been turning out for Kolkata in the IPL and a series of India representative teams. I can understand why the BCCI would protect one of their most precious young assets however the fact that he has played ten games since the middle of August means that he is lacking time in the middle. I would have been inclined to send him back to Punjab for the Vijay Hazare Trophy, get his confidence up and then bring him back in for the Deodhar - because when he is performing well he shoots up the list - we just need to see more of him. 

I heard the news about Glenn Maxwell as I got of a long haul flight where I had watched the documentary 'The Edge'. This spectacular film focuses on the psychological issues that effected Kevin Pietersen and Jonathan Trott once England had reached the top of the Test rankings in 2010. It brought home to me how the sport we all love can have such a profound effect on the mental health of players. One also wonders if this is especially the case for batsmen - who are out there in the middle with the eyes of millions and the vitriol of an opposing eleven focussed on them. Pietersen and Trott spoke about the fact that it was their form deteriorating that brought about their psychological problems - however Maxwell is at the top of his game at this moment in time. He got the fourth highest score in the week he made his decision and is still over 700 points clear at the top of the list - which brings home the fact that the psyche can attack you even when you're on the top of the world. We hope to see Glenn return before the end of the year but there are some outstanding performances which he will be characterised by in 2019. Think about his 209 runs in 3 T20 matches against India in March, think about his career best bowling figures of 5-40 for Lancashire against Middlesex and think about his five Cricketer of the Week accolades in 2019. Most importantly I think we also need to start thinking about the mental strain on Cricketers because it is not just Maxwell, Trott and Pietersen. This year has seen us return to mental health time and time again. We saw the retirement of Marcus Trescothick who was seen as something of an anomaly when he stepped away from the England team to cope with his anxiety in 2006 and the retirement of Sarah Taylor, one of the finest wicket keepers the game has ever seen, retiring at the age of 30 due to her choosing her wellbeing over her cricket. And yet we still boo Steve Smith and David Warner remorselessly around the country. We look back on the golden age of sledging without considering the effects. We still secretly revel in people getting after global superstars on Twitter. Maxwell stepped away from the game before it detrimentally effected his career in the long term and we hope to see him back in the yellow of Australia or the White of Victoria before the end of the year but we do also need to consider how we protect our players mental health as well as their physical health. 

So that's one potential farewell for one player. Now comes a slightly more forceful 'get out!' For a player that has bought our game into disrepute - not that you would know it from the way that some media outlets have covered the story. There have been some fairly unusual occurrences in Bangladesh cricket in the last fortnight; starting with the players threatening to boycott the India series; then the chairman granting all their requests immediately before turning around saying that he regretted complying to their demands. The culmination of this is the seemingly unconnected (but suspiciously timed) announcement that Shakib Al Hasan has been banned for playing for a year - with a further suspended year - due to not reporting three approaches from bookmakers in the last 18 months. This is difficult to cope with. Cricinfo covered this story interestingly posting tweets such as 'Bangladesh without Shakib is like---' asking for humorous responses and the people of Bangladesh took to the streets outside Shakib's house in Magura in protest to the decision. All of this seems unusual to me. It would be hypocritical to lay into Shakib after having just written about protecting players mental health - however not electing to report the approaches seems at best misguided and at worse suspicious. And there comes to an end the journey of one of just six players to have featured in our 2018 and 2019 list, the winner of three Cricketer of the Week awards this year and a further two last year, the player who received the most points during that unforgettable World Cup. The fact that all of this has been tarnished is lamentable. Shakib finishes with 3862 points with a host of players ready to usurp him from his top ten spot by the end of the year. 

Week

Shubman Gill - 204
Abdur Razzak - 202
Jonny Bairstow - 193
Glenn Maxwell - 132
Mohammad Abbas - 112
Joe Burns - 1

Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
Callum Ferguson - dnp 
Simon Harmer - dnp 
Shai Hope - dnp 
Shreyas Iyer - dnp 
Rashid Khan - dnp 
Virat Kohli - dnp 
Jack Leach - dnp 
Morne Morkel- dnp 
Duanne Olivier - dnp 
Wayne Parnell - dnp 
Jeetan Patel - dnp 
Joe Root - dnp 
Rohit Sharma - dnp
Ben Stokes - dnp 
Kane Williamson - dnp 
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp 

Overall 

Glenn Maxwell - 5712
Simon Harmer - 4974
Jeetan Patel - 4385
Virat Kohli- 3891
Shakib Al Hasan -3862
Rashid Khan - 3781
Joe Root- 3769
Ben Stokes - 3706
Jonny Bairstow - 3622
Rohit Sharma - 3593
Shreyas Iyer - 3000
Duanne Olivier - 2852
Jos Buttler - 2793
Wayne Parnell - 2743 
Kane Williamson - 2524
Morne Morkel - 2438
Jack Leach - 2378
Shubman Gill - 2306
Shai Hope - 2128
Callum Ferguson - 2014
Mohammad Abbas - 1969
Kuldeep Yadav - 1694
Abdur Razzak- 1359
Joe Burns - 1325

Rohit Sharma - The Best Cricketer of the Week

This is the time of year where our list of weekly high achievers begins to shorter as a handful of teams dominate. This week we only have six point scoring compatriots from four different teams - however Rohit Sharma's achievement in the First Test against South Africa would have been enough to see him named Cricketer of the Week in most normal weeks. His total of 383 is his second highest total of the year and the fact that it came in the Test arena will please him greatly. In Week 27, Rohit got 467 for his three centuries in a week during the World Cup but I wonder if this means more to him. Long placed in the obscure category of players who dominate in the white ball format but fail to transfer to the longest form of the game, Rohit has now allowed himself the luxury of a rather lush pile of laurels that he can rest upon allowing him to go ahead and get an extended run in the team. He even did so with the customary big hitting style he has become known for - breaking the record for most sixes in a Test Match. What is interesting is that, despite his massive score, he fails to make any progress in the overall table; instead narrowing the gap between him and ninth placed Jonny Bairstow to 162 runs. This is a pattern that we see all the way across the field. Second placed Shai Hope scored 114 points but stays stuck behind Shubman Gill in 19th whilst Virat Kohli's 71 only brings him to within 54 of Rashid Khan despite his poor Week. If a score of 383 can't see you move up the rankings, perhaps our overall table won't look too different on December 31st as is does today.

In fact only one player did move up this week and that is the man who has finished second in our weekly table for two weeks in a row - Shreyas Iyer. His 108 for the week means that in his 5 games since the start of the Vijay Hazare Trophy he has scored 371 - an average of 74.2 per game. With the Indian domestic season only just grinding into gear, it is not behind the realms of possibility that the Mumbai man will continue his trajectory up the table. He will also see quite a lot of national action over the closing months of the year with three T20s against Bangladesh in November and a further three against West Indies. With Iyer now established as an Indian White Ball player, we may find that Shastri may want to try him in the Test team to solve his problem at number four. There are many options for this position in the team with Rishabh Pant, fellow list member Shubman Gill, Manish Pandey and even KL Rahul being mentioned for the spot but on current form it is impossible that before the end of the year, Iyer will play all three formats of the game for his nation.

Assuming you know what kind of form that Rashid Khan will show in any given week is very difficult this year. After a largely disappointing 2019, Rashid joined up with his national team in September for a run of very rich form that saw him play an instrumental role in his side's Test victory over Bangladesh. Since the first Tour game in Bangladesh on the 1st of September, Rashid has bagged 784 points and risen from 10th place to 7th. So with him back to his best hearing he was joining up with his domestic T20 franchise, Band-e-Amir, would have had many expecting the points to come flowing in this week. From his two games he got the princely yield of 6 points with them all coming off the bat. Nothing with the ball. No fielding points. No nothing. There are many caveats to this. He only bowled five overs, 4 versus Kabul and a solitary one against Mis Ainak. However in the game where he bowled the full allocation he went for 45 runs and ended up with an economy of 11.25. The single over makes me think that Rashid is protecting himself for future performances and not for one minute would I expect him to be operating in fifth gear for the lofty competition that is the Shpageeza Cricket League but 6 points from two games is poor for anyone, let alone the best player in his nation on his own turf.

Week

Rohit Sharma - 383
Shai Hope - 114
Shreyas Iyer - 108
Virat Kohli - 71
Shakib Al Hasan - 23
Rashid Khan - 6

Mohammad Abbas - dnp
Jonny Bairstow - dnp
Joe Burns - dnp
Jos Buttler - dnp
Callum Ferguson - dnp
Shubman Gill - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Jack Leach - dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Morne Morkel - dnp
Duanne Olivier - dnp
Wayne Parnell - dnp
Jeetan Patel - dnp
Abdur Razzak - dnp
Joe Root - dnp
Ben Stokes - dnp
Kane Williamson - dnp
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp

Overall

Glenn Maxwell - 5267
Simon Harmer - 4974
Jeetan Patel - 4385
Shakib Al Hasan -3837
Joe Root- 3769
Ben Stokes - 3706
Rashid Khan - 3619
Virat Kohli- 3565
Jonny Bairstow - 3429
Rohit Sharma - 3267
Shreyas Iyer - 2904
Duanne Olivier - 2852
Jos Buttler - 2793
Wayne Parnell - 2743
Kane Williamson - 2498
Morne Morkel - 2438
Jack Leach - 2378
Shubman Gill - 2102
Shai Hope - 2090
Callum Ferguson - 1893
Mohammad Abbas - 1857
Kuldeep Yadav - 1694
Joe Burns - 1128
Abdur Razzak- 898