Phil Salt - The Best Cricketer of the Week

 

Weekly Top 5

1. Phil Salt - 197 - If Salt played in the Carribean every week he might put on Lara like figures. He finishes in first place this week for the second time in 2024. He also moves up to 7th place overall; his highest position in 2 months. He has never been higher.

2. Jos Buttler - 2261 - 20 weeks out of cricket ended disappointingly for Buttler with a golden duck in his first innings. Made that up with 87 more runs in the other two games....fairly unevenly spread mind.

3. Daryl Mitchell - 149 - Not gargantuan figures for Mitchell on his return to domestic cricket; especially when you consider 40% of this came from his bowling figures from a meagre 14 overs. All the points count though.

4. Chamari Athapaththu - 142 - Not producing blistering performances in the WBBL but sheer weight of matches helps put her in a fairly low scoring Top 5 this week.

5. Glenn Maxwell - 84 - The runt of the Top 5 litter this week is Maxwell who scores 58 points fewer than fourth place. Is especially lucky to be here considering he scored a big fat zero in the final ODI against Pakistan.

Overall Top 5

1. Chamari Athapaththu - 4460 - With every passing week of WBBL action she puts herself further away from second place. Her gap is now up to 490. The only gap bigger is between Smith and Khawaja at the other end of the table.

2. James Vince - 3970 - About to enter his final week of inactivity before some rare T10 action. Is very well insulated in silver place; he has 490 above him and 424 below him.

3. Travis Head - 3546 - His fourth week inactive is his joint longest period of fallow time. Next week's fifth inactive week will be his last.

4. Sam Curran - 3406 - 71 points this week narrowed the gap on third place to 167 but that isn't nearly enough to broach a Top Three that is looking pretty untouchable with a month of the competition left.

5. Babar Azam - 3239 - Only 61 points this week but that makes the gap between him and Labuschagne very very very tight instead of just very very very very tight. 67 points separate.

Other Movers

A mere 27 points for Wellington in the Plunket Shield was enough to see Rachin Ravindra breach the Top 10 again.

Top Three Averages

1. Chamari Athapaththu - 171.54 (Down from 172.72)
2. Jos Buttler - 133 (Up from 131.5)
3. Ravindra Jadeja - 132.39.

For the first time in record two players have decreased by the same amount. Aaron Hardie & Rachin Ravindra are both down by 2.97 to 74.36 & 104.22 respectively. Phil Salt is up the most to breach the 100 point a week mark.

Highest scorer by Format

Long Form = Simon Harmer = 2235
One Day = Chamari Athapaththu = 946
Short Form = Chamari Athapaththu- 3514

Highest scorer by Discipline

*=New Name

Runs - James Vince - 2390
Batting Bonus - Travis Head = 380
Strike Rate - Travis Head & * Phil Salt = 790

Wickets - Simon Harmer = 1180
Wicket Bonus - Ravindra Jadeja = 250
Economy - Simon Harmer - 680

Fielding – James Vince = 490
Fielding Bonus - James Vince - 50

Weekly List in Full

Phil Salt 197
Jos Buttler 157
Daryl Mitchell 149
Chamari Athapaththu 142
Glenn Maxwell 84
Sam Curran 71
Babar Azam 61
Rachin Ravindra 27
Aaron Hardie 12

Simon Harmer dnp
James Vince dnp
Moeen Ali dnp
Travis Head dnp
Mitchell Marsh dnp
Harry Brook dnp
Ravindra Jadeja dnp
Shubman Gill dnp
Steve Smith dnp
Usman Khawaja dnp
Marnus Labuschagne dnp
Yashasvi Jaiswal dnp
Virat Kohli dnp

Overall List In Full

1 Chamari Athapaththu 4460
2 James Vince 3970
3 Travis Head 3546
4 Sam Curran 3406
5 Babar Azam 3239
6 Marnus Labuschagne 3172
7 Phil Salt 3053
8 Ravindra Jadeja 3045
9 Yashasvi Jaiswal 2981
10 Rachin Ravindra 2814
11 Simon Harmer 2808
12 Harry Brook 2780
13 Moeen Ali 2727
14 Glenn Maxwell 2383
15 Shubman Gill 2361
16 Jos Buttler 2261
17 Virat Kohli 2099
18 Daryl Mitchell 1937
19 Mitchell Marsh 1685
20 Aaron Hardie 1636
21 Steve Smith 1503
22 Usman Khawaja 998

Virat Kohli - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Kohli is becoming a legend of Indian cricket. On his day nobody can beat the elfin Indian captain - however it is rapidly looking like that he will finish fourth in our list for the second year on the Trott. His 159 points accrued this week from innings of 19 and 70 against his favourite team - the West Indies - has pulled him 185 points away from fifth placed Joe Root. With two weeks left in the year it seems likely that Kohli will get at least fourth placed in the overall List for the year. Root has warm up matches and the first Test against South Africa whilst Kohli has further ODIs against West Indies - his favoured format against his favourite team. So with the chasing pack out of the picture we start to look upwards. Stalwart of our list, Jeetan Patel is a full 370 points ahead of Kohli and has just started his campaign for Wellington in the Super Smash with three wickets and a third place finish for the week. Whilst T20 is not Patel's favoured format, he will play enough games and has enough of a cushion to ensure that he can hold Kohli off. In fact, he is 345 points away from second placed Simon Harmer so it is not out of the question that Harmer, who will now be inactive for the last two weeks, may drop to third. One thing that is becoming increasingly clear is that Glenn Maxwell is very likely to be our star man for 2019.

This year's Cricket List has brought about an abundance of times when our top 5 for the week have featured a plethora of Indian talent. There have only been 20 weeks of the year where an Indian player has not made the weekly top 5 and this week is the sixth occasion where three Indian players feature - as Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill join Kohli. Rohit bagged another half century in the first T20 against the West Indies and in doing so became the latest player to leapfrog the disgraced Shakib Al Hasan. Sharma is now 8th with Rashid Khan 154 above him. Rashid is about to join up with Adelaide for some T20 action in the BBL so there could still be a bit of a tussle between the two of them to see who can jostle their way to finish just outside the top 5. Further down the list you will find Shubman Gill. A player whose top five aspirations died out many a moon ago. Shubman has been a frustrating prospect this year. When he plays he registers good scores - averaging 96 points across his 28 active weeks. However it is those 22 inactive weeks that really held him back. If he played as many weeks as this week's top Cricketer, Virat Kohli, he would have had 3456, enough to boost his position six places and be just outside the top ten. Instead he has to satisfy himself with overtaking Shai Hope into 18th position. He is undoubtably a decent Cricketer but his position in next year's list is in question thanks to his lack of cricket.

When it is clear that a player won't make the top ten summary on New Year's Eve and may not make the List for the next year, I feel that it is nice to offer something of a cricketing obituary for one of our soon to be departed brethren. Morne Morkel was a debutant to our list this year and is unlikely to feature next year after a disappointing year for Surrey, surprisingly salvaged by a burst of T20 form that helped his Tshwane side reach the final of the MSL. Barely mentioned in these posts for the bulk of the year, I have been forced to dedicate some time to him over the last few weeks due to his spurt up the table. At the start of the MSL, the veteran South African was in 17th; he finishes it in joint 14th and 322 points better off with a game still to play. Short of a legendary performance in the final, Morkel will finish the year as one of four players that did not win Cricketer of the Week in 2019 (alongside Jos Buttler, Jack Leach and Kane Williamson) and will have achieved a fairly nondescript year of cricket. His highest scoring week of 2019 came in Week 23 where he got 252 points through a seven wicket haul against Somerset. I think it very fitting that Surrey did not win that match and he did not feature in the write up for that week. If you do not feature in 2020, goodbye Morne - the invisible man of the 2019 campaign.

Week

Virat Kohli - 159
Rohit Sharma- 146
Jeetan Patel - 120
Shubman Gill - 68
Morne Morkel - 60
Mohammad Abbas - 50
Kuldeep Yadav - 40
Shreyas Iyer - 20
Callum Ferguson - 13

Shakib Al Hassan - dnp
Jonny Bairstow- dnp
Jos Buttler - dnp
Joe Burns - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Shai Hope - dnp
Rashid Khan - dnp
Jack Leach - dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Duanne Olivier - dnp
Wayne Parnell - dnp
Joe Root - dnp
Abdur Razzak - dnp
Ben Stokes - dnp
Kane Williamson - dnp

Overall

Glenn Maxwell - 5712
Simon Harmer - 5115
Jeetan Patel - 4770
Virat Kohli- 4400
Joe Root- 4215
Ben Stokes - 4174
Rashid Khan - 4124
Rohit Sharma - 3970
Shakib Al Hasan -3862
Jonny Bairstow - 3725
Shreyas Iyer - 3566
Jos Buttler - 3084
Duanne Olivier - 3021
Callum Ferguson - 2760
Morne Morkel - 2760
Wayne Parnell - 2743
Kane Williamson - 2733
Shubman Gill - 2688
Shai Hope - 2659
Jack Leach - 2598
Mohammad Abbas - 2149
Abdur Razzak- 1925
Kuldeep Yadav - 1800
Joe Burns - 1613

Ben Stokes - The Best Cricketer of the Week

A good year sees a player perform well over a short period of time. Amazing years are where a player performs well all throughout the year. This is the third time Ben Stokes has finished as Cricketer of the Week. The first was in February when he was the stand out performer in a poor series against the West Indies. The second was that wondrous Headingley performance in May. Now, as his home nation is shrouded in ice and darkness, he has bookended his spectacular year with another high quality performance. It does seem rather ironic that on the three occasions that Stokes has finished top of the tree it has been for performing above expectations in a disappointing team performance - and this week was no exception. A humiliating innings defeat to New Zealand where the England bowling line up looked (at best) toothless and (definitely) brainless saw Stokes get 219 points - 63% of which were for his batting performance. He was, by some distance, the highest run scorer in the first innings and stopped the game from being even worse than it could have been. Stokes' highest weekly score since Headingley was enough to see him back into the top five; muscling Virat Kohli - who scored a century himself this week - into sixth. Stokes' team-mate and captain Joe Root rounds off the movement at the top of the table as his disappointing score of 63 was enough to see him overtake Shakib Al Hasan and take seventh spot.

There was also a hell of a lot of movement down at the bottom of the table. Last week places sixteen to twenty read: Callum Ferguson, Kane Williamson, Jack Leach, Morne Morkel and Shubman Gill. Over the course of this week, that has completely turned on it's head. After finishing top of the List last week, Callum Ferguson may regret his week off as he drops from 16th to 20th. The other player descending was Kane Williamson who drops from 17th to an all-time low of 19th - despite the fact that he scored points for the first time in a month. The two players to take advantage of this reshuffle were Morne Morkel and Shubman Gill who executed a switcheroo with their antipodean brethren. Shubman Gill did not set the world alight in two of his three Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy games, however got 78 in the final game of the week against Mumbai to help him grab a total of 161 for the week and move from 20th to 17th. Surprisingly Morne Morkel has also used a T20 tournament to boost his score. More of a doyenne of the red ball, the veteran South Africa got five wickets in two games for Tshwane to register his highest score since September and move from 19th up to sixteenth. As we enter the last month of this year's Cricket List, it is as tight at the bottom as it is at the top. Just 179 points separate Wayne Parnell in sixteenth and Callum Ferguson in twentieth. It is all to play for.......unless you are Mohammad Abbas, Abdur Razzak or Joe Burns.

A glint of hope is opening up for Glenn Maxwell. When he revealed his mental health problems and his intention to step away from the game for an indeterminate period of time, he received an outpouring of support both within and outside the game. At the time he was top of the list and 738 points clear of Simon Harmer. Many expected the chasing pack to catch up with the Australian but, four weeks later, Maxwell is still numero uno and with a cushion of just 597 points. The usually unstoppable Simon Harmer has looked distinctly stoppable in that time and his total of just 141 from his five MSL games leaves a lot to be desired. This was clearly a sentiment also shared by Donovan Miller, who has this week dropped the ex-captain from his team. With the Johannesburg side rooted to the bottom of the table, Simon Harmer is likely to have just three more games in him this year. If Simon Harmer is out of the running we should turn our attention to the rest of the pack. Third place Jeetan Patel will be playing all month for Wellington but he is 1062 points behind Maxwell. It is feasible Patel might overtake Harmer but he will have to go some to take top spot. The next highest placed player is Rashid Khan who is 1578 points off the Australian - an impossibly high amount of points to overturn. It is starting to seem that Maxwell has built up such an impressive lead that, despite two months inactive, he will be crowned the winner of The Cricket List 2019 after all.

Week

Ben Stokes - 219
Shreyas Iyer - 199
Virat Kohli - 196
Jeetan Patel - 189
Shubman Gill - 161
Morne Morkel - 150
Joe Burns - 137
Rashid Khan - 112
Jack Leach - 98
Kane Williamson - 71
Joe Root - 63
Duanne Olivier- 60
Jos Buttler - 53
Shai Hope - 43
Rohit Sharma - 31

Mohammad Abbas - dnp
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
Jonny Bairstow- dnp
Callum Ferguson - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Wayne Parnell - dnp
Abdur Razzak - dnp
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp

Overall

Glenn Maxwell - 5712
Simon Harmer - 5115
Jeetan Patel - 4650
Rashid Khan - 4124
Ben Stokes - 4098
Virat Kohli- 4097
Joe Root- 3915
Shakib Al Hasan -3862
Rohit Sharma - 3796
Jonny Bairstow - 3725
Shreyas Iyer - 3542
Jos Buttler - 3084
Duanne Olivier - 3021
Wayne Parnell - 2743
Shai Hope - 2659
Morne Morkel - 2648
Shubman Gill - 2620
Jack Leach - 2598
Kane Williamson - 2595
Callum Ferguson - 2567
Mohammad Abbas - 2039
Abdur Razzak- 1925
Kuldeep Yadav - 1760
Joe Burns - 1609

Virat Kohli - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Our list shows no bias. Batsmen are dealt with in the same way as bowlers. The Test favourite is on an equal playing field to the T20 mercenary. One thing that you can be sure of is that if you score two centuries in a week, you are going to be claiming top spot. Virat Kohli, this week's winner, has not claimed the title as many times as you would have thought. This is only his fifth time at the pinnacle of our list. Out of his previous four table-topping performances three have been whilst representing Bangalore. The other? Well, that was for a week where he scored two hundreds in two ODIs against West Indies. To pull off that feat once is a great achievement - to do so twice shows the man is a true ODI legend. As well as taking his inaugural Cricketer of the Week accolade for 2019, he also climbs into the overall top five for the first time this year - quite an achievement when you consider he has been inactive for 40% of gameweeks. He finds himself cheek by jowel with his old enemy from 2018. Joe Root is just in front of him in fourth place. The two captains spent all of 2018 in a dog fight - and with just 95 points between them we look set for a similar battle this time out. 

It was just a matter of time as to when Shakib Al Hasan would lose his overall top spot - and it has taken rather longer than many would have thought. Three weeks ago it seemed like Ben Stokes was going to overtake the Bangladesh captain but a subsequent dip in form and a break from the game left the field open for Glenn Maxwell. Last week he trailed Shakib by a solitary point but now has a lead of 150. Strangely enough a wicket was the way that Maxwell initially eased into top spot however he then followed that up with 51 runs for Australia in two ODIs against India. Again we have seen an extension of the rule I set out last week: If Maxwell scores big Australia win. Whilst the performances of Usman Khawaja and Aaron Finch would have caught the eye more, 47 off 31 balls for Maxwell continued to push the envelope for the Aussies in Friday's game. The stellar run of form that has seen Maxwell move up our overall table has also seen him move up the batting order for his national team. Starting this series at 7, he came in at first drop for yesterday's ODI. Perhaps an acknowledgment of his big hitting prowess. 

This week has seen two of our favourites hope to turn over a new leaf in 2019 by displaying something a little different to what we have seen from them thus far. Last year Rashid Khan's party trick was getting wickets in clusters and backing that up with explosive batting. So far we have seen him struggle to combine these facets of his game. Sometimes getting one, rarely getting two, oftentimes getting none. Even this week, where he got his highest score of the year and claimed second place on our weekly table, he picked up 50 economy points but just three wickets against the comparatively fragile batsmen of Ireland. Even his approach to batting seems markedly different. For someone whose ODI batting average is 99.86, to see Rashid grinding out 52 off 58 balls batting at number nine is odd to say the least. I have often speculated that Rashid is trying to adapt himself into something of an allrounder- perhaps he used this game to practice a new approach to his batting. Another player that showed us something different was Jeetan Patel. Last year's third place finisher has began the year out of sorts. Last week he was in the bottom five of all contributors and only finds himself one better this week despite getting 149 - by far his biggest total of the year. This is largely thanks to a stunning cameo of 20 off 11 balls with the bat - something almost unheard of from the Kiwi. Patel is usually a player associated with combining large hauls of wickets with economies regularly under 4. So far this year he is struggling with both. Against Canterbury he broke one of these hoodoos and managed to sort out his economy but we still await the Patel who can gut a batting order. Both Patel and Khan were in the mix all the way through 2018, if they keep up the form they have shown this week they could be working up the league in no time. 

Week 

Virat Kohli- 319
Rashid Khan - 210
Kuldeep Yadav- 183
Jonny Bairstow - 160
Glenn Maxwell - 151
Jeetan Patel - 149
Shreyas Iyer - 118
Joe Root - 105
Mohammad Abbas - 70
Callum Ferguson - 68
Abdur Razzak - 51
Joe Burns - 48
Shai Hope - 43
Rohit Sharma - 14


Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
Shubman Gill - dnp 
Simon Harmer - dnp 
Jack Leach- dnp 
Duanne Olivier - dnp 
Wayne Parnell - dnp 
Ben Stokes - dnp 
Kane Williamson - dnp 

Morne Morkel- ytp 

Overall 

Glenn Maxwell - 1321
Shakib Al Hasan - 1171
Ben Stokes - 1160
Joe Root- 1098
Virat Kohli- 1003
Shreyas Iyer - 983
Rashid Khan - 979
Kane Williamson - 971
Kuldeep Yadav - 811
Duanne Olivier - 793
Jos Buttler - 760
Jonny Bairstow - 759
Rohit Sharma - 753
Callum Ferguson - 671
Joe Burns - 604
Simon Harmer - 500
Shai Hope - 465
Jeetan Patel - 446
Shubman Gill - 340
Mohammad Abbas - 331
Abdur Razzak- 178
Wayne Parnell - 148
Jack Leach - 65

Morne Morkel - ytp