JP Duminy - The Best Cricketer of the Week

I feel a slight sense of anti climax after last week's record high of 2943 points to only be awarding 477 this week, however a combination of rain in England, the conclusion of the two series between Sri Lanka and South Africa and West Indies and Bangladesh as well as the fact this week falls between Tests in the England-India series means that cricket was more scarce this week. The beneficiary of this is Cricketer of the Week JP Duminy whose two wickets and 38 runs sees him top of the tree. His return to form in the last few weeks has, not only seen him back in the mix with regards to point scoring, but also made T20 captain for South Africa. This seems a strange move when, as I touched on last week, his talents lay more in the One Day arena - however his tally of 118 points, added to his 337 from last week, has seen him shoot up the overall table. This week he has overtaken Ravi Ashwin to take 12th place - if he can overcome his 2018 T20 hoodoo - we could see the South African force his way into the top ten in the coming weeks. 

I am surprised to see Kane Williamson so far down the weekly table. Unlike his other T20 Blast compatriots, Williamson's Yorkshire team has dodged the rain this week and managed to complete two games. Despite this successful moisture dodging, Williamson scored just 11 runs against Nottinghamshire and 1 in the Roses game; which was not the greatest birthday present for the 28 year old. In his three weeks at Yorkshire it has been a real case of feast or famine for the New Zealand captain. In his ten innings across the T20 Blast and the County Championship he has registered four innings over 35 but 6 innings under 11. This variable form is also seen in his weekly points tallies with him scoring 90 in his first week, 298 in his second and 22 this week. Overall his average is a fairly underwhelming 23.6 however if he shows what he is capable of in his stellar four innings (213 runs at 53.25) rather than his six rubbish ones (23 at 4.6) he could challenge those around him on the overall table. At the beginning of the IPL he, Joe Root and Virat Kohli were all at the bottom of the top ten together, whilst the other two Test captains have drawn away from him, Williamson is currently still in ninth place and has Jofra Archer in tenth and JP Duminy in twelfth chasing him closely for his berth. 

We, as cricket fans, can sometimes be quite sadistic to those that abuse the game - however we can forgive when we feel like it. For every Salman Butt and Shahid Afridi there is a Michael Atherton or Faf du Plessis who has been welcomed back into the cricketing fraternity with open arms. We are yet to decide what to do with the Sandpaper Three - however David Warner, believed to be the chief architect of that fateful day in South Africa, is continuing his time in T20 purgatory whilst we decide what we want to do with him. After his time in Canada where he scored six single figure scores out of his eight matches for Winnipeg, he has now joined up with St Lucia in the CPL where he kick started his campaign with...a single figure score. To top this off he also dropped an absolute sitter of a catch. For those who say that franchise cricket is not much of a punishment for the three cast into the wilderness, all you need do is look at the form of Warner and think again. 

Week

JP Duminy - 118
Sunil Narine - 74
Quinton de Kock - 73
Hashim Amla- 70
Jeetan Patel- 66
Simon Harmer - 45
Kane Williamson - 22
David Warner - 9 
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp 
Jofra Archer- dnp 
Ravi Ashwin- dnp 
George Bailey - dnp 
Jos Buttler - dnp 
AB De Villiers- dnp 
Dean Elgar- dnp 
Ravi Jadeja - dnp 
Aaron Finch - dnp 
Rashid Khan - dnp 
Virat Kohli - dnp 
Nathan Lyon - dnp 
Mitchell Marsh - dnp 
Shaun Marsh- dnp 
Steve Smith- dnp 
Joe Root - dnp 

Overall

Simon Harmer - 4374
Jeetan Patel - 4051
Rashid Khan - 3619
Jos Buttler - 3414
Aaron Finch - 3057
Sunil Narine- 3048
Virat Kohli- 3009
Joe Root - 2995
Kane Williamson -2821
Jofra Archer - 2735
Shakib Al Hasan - 2582
JP Duminy - 2281
Ravi Ashwin - 2183
AB De Villiers- 2010
Hashim Amla - 1969
Quinton de Kock - 1866
Nathan Lyon - 1833
Dean Elgar- 1686
Shaun Marsh- 1498
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
Ravi Jadeja - 1226
David Warner - 1020
Steve Smith - 965
George Bailey - 631

Shakib Al Hasan - The Best Cricketer of the Week

They who like cricket were royally entertained last week with competitions scattered all over the globe in all format. No matter your Domestic or national allegiance there was a game which caught your fancy. The eyes of the cricketing world were inevitably drawn towards England against India - no mean feat for a format which has allegedly been dying for as long as I can remember - however it was away from this spotlight and this format that we see two returning goliaths of this game top scoring for the week. Shakib Al Hasan was the first Cricketer to score back to back Cricketer of the Week accolades before injury led to an underwhelming second quarter of the year. This week his team faced up against West Indies four times (one ODI and three T20Is). The Bangladesh captain was solid in all four games but his piece De resistance came in the second T20I where he scored 60 and bagged two wickets. Overall the player got 140 runs and three wickets but many a point was picked up for economies and strike rates to see him seal top spot for the week. Hasan is joined at the top of the weekly tree by a player who was very much in the mix in the first quarter of the year before likewise dropping away. JP Duminy's Momentum One Day Cup form for the Warriors was exquisite before a break from the game and an underwhelming IPL season saw him slide down the table. On his return to One Day cricket for South Africa he has returned to form with 177 runs to his name in the series against Sri Lanka. Out of all the names on our list it is Duminy who gets the most of his runs in the One Day format. Whilst Harmer and Patel are staples of the Long form stuff, Rashid and Buttler more for the short form and Kohli and Williamson straddling all formats, it is only Duminy who exclusively relies on One Day cricket for his star studded performances. He is the last of a dying breed. Despite the impressive performances from these two men, there has not been a huge amount of forward momentum in the overall table. Shakib remains in eleventh place with an 153 point gap up to Jofra Archer in tenth, whilst Duminy moves up two places to thirteenth. 

I find it hard to adjudicate on who has won the Root v Kohli battle this week. For pedants out there you can't help but say that Root won due to the fact that his team did. Despite this, Kohli's 270 points compared to Root's 114 coupled with Kohli overtaking the England captain again and seizing sixth place overall surely puts the Indian back in the driving seat. One thing that is for sure is that it is as tight as anything on the overall table with Kohli ahead by a mere 9 runs. With the competition between the two men very much represented in the matches themselves, it makes the next 4 Tests very interesting indeed. 

Rashid Khan and Jos Buttler are like ET and Elliot in reverse. If you remember from the tear-jerking and frankly terrifying Steven Spielberg classic , the young man and his extra-terrestrial friend were intractably linked - in this cricketing variant, whenever the Afghanistan player plays well the English player is bound to flop and vice versa. This theory posited last week has been writ large this week where the Sussex Spinner's return to form saw him get his first three figure score in eight weeks. In reply, the Englishman scored a measly one point in the first test against India. With Rashid signing an extension of his contract at Sussex, England fans up and down the land will be wishing nothing but ill will on the young Afghanistan prodigy so that the Test team can turn round their weak middle order. 

The cricketing week has been so dense that if I wrote in detail about all the remarkable performances this post would be delayed even further than it has been. Needless to say in normal weeks we would have focused on such things as:

Aaron Finch and Jofra Archer's continued dominance of the T20 Blast with bat and ball respectively
Ravi Ashwin's hatfull of wickets against England 
Kane Williamson's two man of the match performances for Yorkshire
Quinton de Kock's dramatic return to form for South Africa as he prepares to join Hampshire.

But on a week where no fewer than eight players scored over 200 points one has to be selective. One interesting thing to see is that, despite this high scoring week, the overall table has shown very little movement. At the very top of the table we've seen some incredibly large gaps between players. This allows for dramatically high scoring weeks to only make relatively small dents in the overall table. Or more correctly, it used to. Due to this big scoring week we now see the largest gap on the overall table at a mere 399 between Ravi Ashwin and JP Duminy in tenth and eleventh. Closer to the top of the table there is now just 366 points between Jeetan Patel and Rashid Khan in second and third and 357 between Buttler and Finch in fourth and fifth. These are the three biggest gaps on the overall table. We may see some rather drastic musical chairs in the coming few weeks. 

Week

Shakib Al Hasan - 350
JP Duminy- 337
Ravi Ashwin - 328
Kane Williamson - 298 
Quinton de Kock - 296
Aaron Finch - 283
Virat Kohli - 270
Jofra Archer - 202
Hashim Amla - 191
Rashid Khan - 156
Joe Root - 114
Jeetan Patel - 86
Simon Harmer - 31
Jos Buttler - 1
George Bailey - dnp 
AB De Villiers - dnp 
Dean Elgar- dnp 
Ravi Jadeja - dnp 
Nathan Lyon - dnp 
Mitchell Marsh - dnp 
Shaun Marsh - dnp 
Sunil Narine- dnp 
Steve Smith - dnp 
David Warner - dnp 

Overall

Simon Harmer - 4329
Jeetan Patel - 3985
Rashid Khan - 3619
Jos Buttler - 3414
Aaron Finch - 3057
Virat Kohli- 3009
Joe Root - 2995
Sunil Narine- 2974
Kane Williamson -2799
Jofra Archer - 2735
Shakib Al Hasan - 2582
Ravi Ashwin - 2183
JP Duminy - 2163
AB De Villiers- 2010
Hashim Amla - 1899
Nathan Lyon - 1833
Quinton de Kock - 1793
Dean Elgar- 1686
Shaun Marsh- 1498
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
Ravi Jadeja - 1226
David Warner - 1011
Steve Smith - 965
George Bailey - 631

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

Joe Root - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Using a single week of this Summer as a springboard for future success has proved something of a difficult thing for anyone. Last week I said that Virat Kohli's dominance of Joe Root was something of an embarrassment and that the Indian captain's 265 could be a sign of big things to come. Fast forward seven days and it is Joe Root who sits top of the tree after executing a 268 point swing that saw the England Test captain overtake both his Indian counterpart and Aaron Finch and move into sixth place. It has been a disappointing year for Root and one week does not redress that but if Adil Rashid's career can turn on one ball then the infinitely more talented Root can change his year in one week. Something I used to talk about fairly regularly at the beginning of these posts was the fact that these points could prove a barometer for who really was the best young batting captain out of Root, Kohli, Williamson and Smith. With Smith having been knocked out of the equation it is interesting that, with over half the year gone and despite the relatively poor form he has been in, it is Root who sits above his two rivals . With the hoodoo of not being able to convert fifties into centuries seemingly broken and a decent T20 Blast game to boost his confidence, this Summer could be the chance for him to underline that supremacy in permanent marker. 

The long awaited return of Kane Williamson has been something of an anti-climax. Having been absent from cricket since the IPL final six weeks ago, his return to Yorkshire has been anticipated by fans of the White Rose, New Zealanders and Williamson alike. His yield of just six points from the truncated T20 Blast game against Lancashire will not have been the display that anyone desired but the Kiwi's visits to God's country are often fruitful and he will be hopeful of keeping up with the pace in the top ten whilst aiming to boost his side up the Division One Table. For one four-day game he will join up with Cricketer of the Week Joe Root in what is a tantalising advert for the English county game. 

Following two weeks of impeccable form that saw him top the Weekly tables for a fortnight, Aaron Finch was finally beaten.....by rain. In the abandoned game against Kent, the Surrey batsman posted 83 off 38 balls - enough to give him at least 143 points, keep his lead on Joe Root and continue a very strong month for the Victorian but, as the rain washed out the Spitfire ground so too did it wash away Finch's chance of continued domination. This does not diminish Finch's achievements. If you include the abandoned 83 from Thursday, Finch has scored 662 runs at a strike rate of 95 in his nine matches since the end of the IPL. With games against Somerset, Glamorgan and Middlesex forthcoming Finch will be itching to get bat in hand again to ensure his hot streak continues. 

Finch was the first back to back winner of the best Cricketer of the Week award since Shakib Al Hasan did it in January - but since then the Bangladesh captain has been rather subdued ...until this week. Despite West Indies humiliating crushing of his national side, the captain can feel very proud of his contributions in the second Test with figures of 6/33 in the second innings and a combined total of 86 runs. The 381 points accrued by the Magura born man are his highest achieved in 2018. It also sees him the biggest mover of the week on the overall table - rising to eleventh from fourteenth. 

Would there be any more fitting an end to Smith and Warner's foray into Canadian cricket than the two exiled Australians having gained no further ground on each other and scoring the exact same points? Last week I said that Warner would be the narrow winner due to the fact that his Winnipeg Hawks team were playing in the final but Warner had the most spectacular zero point game of 2018 to mean that both he and Smith gain 259 points in the competition. This means there is still 46 points between them and that their tournament has comprised of drawing marginally away from George Bailey and marginally towards Ravi Jadeja. 

Week

Joe Root - 424 
Shakib Al Hasan - 381
Jofra Archer - 381
Virat Kohli- 156
Jos Buttler - 80
Jeetan Patel - 60
Simon Harmer - 48
Ravi Ashwin - 30
Kane Williamson - 6
David Warner - 0 
Hashim Amla- dnp 
George Bailey - dnp 
Quinton de Kock- dnp 
AB De Villiers- dnp 
JP Duminy- dnp 
Dean Elgar - dnp 
Aaron Finch- dnp 
Ravi Jadej - dnp 
Rashid Khan - dnp 
Nathan Lyon - dnp 
Mitchell Marsh- dnp 
Shaun Marsh - dnp 
Sunil Narine - dnp 
Steve Smith - dnp 


Overall

Simon Harmer - 4298
Jeetan Patel - 3582
Rashid Khan - 3463
Jos Buttler - 3301
Sunil Narine- 2974
Joe Root - 2691
Aaron Finch - 2689
Virat Kohli- 2651
Kane Williamson -2411
Jofra Archer - 2214
Shakib Al Hasan - 2054
AB De Villiers- 2010
Nathan Lyon - 1833
Ravi Ashwin - 1820
JP Duminy - 1737
Hashim Amla - 1667
Dean Elgar- 1594
Shaun Marsh- 1498
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
Quinton de Kock - 1387
Ravi Jadeja - 1201
David Warner - 1011
Steve Smith - 965
George Bailey - 631

Aaron Finch - The Best Cricketer of the Week...again

It must be difficult for a natural record breaker such as Aaron Finch to be the second person to do something or the seventh best at something but this week he is the second player after Shakib Al Hasan back in January to score back to Cricketer of the Week accolades largely due to the seventh highest T20 Blast score in the history of the competition. His 131 for Surrey put the icing on the cake of what was already a week where he had ended the tri-series with 47 against Pakistan before joining up with Surrey and getting 58 in his first match against Essex. It really has been an excellent Summer for the Victorian with his average since the first of June at a heady 70.7. His strike rate is almost as impressive as his high number of runs. This week alone his three totals came at strike rates of 174, 175 and 166. He continues to rise up the overall table and has this week leapfrogged the long dormant Kane Williamson to claim sixth place. 

Using these head to head battles has added a further element of competition to this overall contest - however the comparison between Joe Root and Virat Kohli has been as one side as the Titanic in the last week. Root's Summer continues to be drab and dreary - this week his 22 points is his lowest ever score from a week where he has been active. This has been coupled with his omission from the England squad for the final T20 match. Compare this to the Indian captain who used this week as a springboard to turn his fortunes around with 265 points and a second place finish in the weekly table. He has coupled 122 runs with decent strike rates and fielding contributions to put together his most effective week in England in recent memory. From an Indian perspective there will be a huge sense of anticipation that the two players form will remain the same as the Test series approaches. Overall Kohli has overtaken both Williamson and Root and put himself into seventh place and now has a 228 point lead over his English opponent. 

The Summer Test series are very much starting to swing into play - which sees a number of our list returning to action after periods away from point scoring however four of these players have been rather humiliated on their return to the biggest stage. Our three South African candidates Hashim Amla, Quinton de Kock and Dean Elgar were rather humbled by Sri Lanka in a match that finished somewhat prematurely this morning. Whilst Amla's weekly score looks the most decent of the trio, a majority of his runs came courtesy of a score of 78 versus a Sri Lanka Board XI and just 15 from the Test. Quinton De Kock's poor run of form that dates back to the IPL continues as his return from nine absent weeks yielded a mere 15 runs across four innings. Not much better was Shakib Al Hasan's showing in Bangladesh's loss to the West Indies. He contributed 12 runs and 2 wickets as his team were rolled over in an innings defeat. Both of these teams and their players will hope for better in their off season tours. 

The tournament is over for two of the three players who have been plying their trade in Canada over the last few weeks. Sunil Narine's Montreal Tigers and Steve Smith's Toronto Nationals have been eliminated with only David Warner's Winnipeg Hawks facing the prospect of a further two games if they can reach the final in today's last qualifier. Inarguably it is the West Indian spinner who has impressed the most of the trio. Despite his team's early exit the player has accrued 357 points over the tournament. Despite David Warner's tepid start, a good week this week has seen both he and Smith get 259 to this point in the competition - however Warner will swell this total due to his continued participation. It will be Warner who feels most pleased out of the two disgraced Australians as he breaks the 1000 point mark for the year and puts himself in contention to overtake Ravi Jadeja when he joins up with the St Lucia Stars. 

Naturally we need to mention Simon Harmer, Jeetan Patel and Rashid Khan at least once in these posts. As predicted Harmer and Patel are struggling in the T20 Blast due to both these players preferring the longer form of the game. What is perhaps more of a surprise is Rashid Khan, something of a T20 Golgotha, taking to the tournament like a duck to hoisin sauce. It is something of a surprise to me that a man who is so destructive in the Big Bash League and the IPL would struggle in the more pedestrian standards of the T20 Blast. This week he got a measly three wickets from his three games. Over and above this his economy rates have been shockingly high for a man who, on the international stage, is usually the king of the Maiden. Sussex will not mind whilst they are near the top of the table but they will want their superstar acquisition to start playing in a more super way if they have a chance of winning the tournament. 

Week

Aaron Finch - 386
Virat Kohli - 265
Ravi Ashwin - 202
David Warner - 187
Jos Buttler - 181
Sunil Narine- 156 
Steve Smith- 153
Hashim Amla - 143
Jofra Archer - 129
Dean Elgar- 110
Simon Harmer - 105
Shakib Al Hassan - 102
Quinton De Kock- 95
Rashid Khan - 71
Jeetan Patel - 47
Joe Root - 22
George Bailey - dnp 
AB De Villiers- dnp 
JP Duminy- dnp 
Ravi Jadeja- dnp 
Nathan Lyon - dnp 
Mitchell Marsh- dnp 
Shaun Marsh - dnp 
Kane Williamson - dnp 

Overall

Simon Harmer - 4250
Jeetan Patel - 3522
Rashid Khan - 3463
Jos Buttler - 3221
Sunil Narine- 2974
Aaron Finch - 2689
Virat Kohli- 2495
Kane Williamson -2405
Joe Root - 2267
AB De Villiers- 2010
Jofra Archer - 1833
Nathan Lyon - 1833
Ravi Ashwin - 1790
JP Duminy - 1737
Shakib Al Hasan - 1673
Hashim Amla - 1667
Dean Elgar- 1594
Shaun Marsh- 1498
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
Quinton de Kock - 1387
Ravi Jadeja - 1201
David Warner - 1011
Steve Smith - 965
George Bailey - 631