Joe Root - The Best Cricketer of the Week

Back to back Cricketer of the Week accolades for two English Cricketers would make you think that English Test cricket was in the pink of health and that Chris Silverwood's debut as national coach has The Queen clamouring for her New Year's Honours List. Unfortunately this is not the case. After Ben Stokes' losing cause at the top of the weekly List last week, Joe Root followed suit this week with a massive 226 runs which sees him score 156 points more than second placed Callum Ferguson. Despite the batter friendly conditions in Hamilton, Root's career best Test score was a fitting way for him to re-enter the top 5. Yet again, this week saw the Top 5 change place considerably. Joe Root and, his age old enemy, Virat Kohli both shone on the international stage to force their agenda and move into 5th and 4th respectively. Despite scraping into the top five for the week, Ben Stokes was forced into sixth overall whilst inactive Rashid Khan has had the largest fall from grace. The Afghanistan spinner was fourth last week and has tumbled to seventh this week. England are now inactive for ten days until a warm up game in South Africa whilst India still have two more T20s and a three match ODI series against the West Indies to play. It seems that fourth place is Virat Kohli's to lose.

It is a rare treat to see Kane Williamson in the top 5. You need to go back to July and the World Cup for the last time the New Zealand captain graced one of the top 5 places. In fact his yield of 138 points for a century against England his highest score since that very week. It has been an unusually poor year for Kane Williamson but it is clear to see that when the talismanic captain plays he shoots up the table. This week he overtook no less than four players on The Cricket List and jumped from 19th berth to 16th. I wish no disrespect to those players around him, but for him to be in the mix alongside Morne Morkel, Shai Hope, Shubman Gill and Jack Leach shows that the New Zealander is under baked this year. In 2018, where Williamson finished 9th overall, he featured in 33 weeks of the year and averaged 128.82 points per week. With just three weeks left of 2019, Williamson has played in five fewer weeks and averages 97.61 points a week. That is a massive drop from the batsman and shows why he is in such a poor position comparatively. That being said, he is one of the few players in this list who will be seeing regular cricket all the way up to the end of the year thanks to the Test series against Australia so he could yet bridge that gulf.

This list is somewhat skewed towards two groups of players: international stars and County Championship imports. Two imports who disappointed this year have been doing rather better since returning to their home patches. Morne Morkel has been using the MSL to move himself up the table with a much greater rapidity than he was used to when turning out for Surrey. So destructive in the 2018 season, Morkel's numbers were dramatically down in 2019. In the 26 weeks that comprised the university games to the last round of fixtures in September, Morkel got 2438 points averaging 93.77 a week - this is including inactive weeks where the South African barely turned out in the T20 Blast or the Royal London One Day Cup. Many would have expected that to be the end of Morkel's year despite the fact that he was joining up with Tshwane. White ball cricket was not the forte of this player so a gradual slip down the table was only to be expected. This has not been the case. In the three weeks since the start of the MSL, Morkel has gained 262 points, an average of 87.33 a week - only 6.44 down on his red ball pomp. Not a bad showing from the old boy. Another veteran of the international scene who is absolutely tearing it up after a poor English summer is Callum Ferguson. In the 8 weeks that he has been back playing for South Australia, Ferguson has gained 854 points compared to the 1164 points he got in his 26 weeks playing for Worcestershire in all competitions. Ferguson's average in England was 50.61 whilst in 8 games back down under he averages a stonking 122 with three centuries in the last three weeks. This has seen Ferguson leap from 20th at the end of the County Championship to 14th this week - overtaking Leach, Gill, Hope, Morkel, Williamson and Parnell in the last seven days. The big question is whether Ferguson can keep this form up with Sydney Thunder in the BBL. If so, he could challenge those just outside the top ten with his late season form.

Week

Joe Root - 336
Callum Ferguson - 180
Virat Kohli - 144
Kane Williamson - 138
Ben Stokes - 76
Mohammad Abbas - 60
Morne Morkel - 52
Rohit Sharma - 28
Joe Burns - 4
Shreyas Iyer - 4

Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
Jonny Bairstow- dnp
Jos Buttler - dnp
Shubman Gill - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Shai Hope - dnp
Rashid Khan - dnp
Jack Leach - dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Duanne Olivier - dnp
Wayne Parnell - dnp
Jeetan Patel - dnp
Abdur Razzak - dnp
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp

Overall

Glenn Maxwell - 5712
Simon Harmer - 5115
Jeetan Patel - 4650
Virat Kohli- 4241
Joe Root- 4215
Ben Stokes - 4174
Rashid Khan - 4124
Shakib Al Hasan -3862
Rohit Sharma - 3824
Jonny Bairstow - 3725
Shreyas Iyer - 3546
Jos Buttler - 3084
Duanne Olivier - 3021
Callum Ferguson - 2747
Wayne Parnell - 2743
Kane Williamson - 2733
Morne Morkel - 2700
Shai Hope - 2659
Shubman Gill - 2620
Jack Leach - 2598
Mohammad Abbas - 2099
Abdur Razzak- 1925
Kuldeep Yadav - 1760
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

Callum Ferguson - The Best Cricketer of the Week

And then there were four. Simon Harmer has done it seven times. Glenn Maxwell has done it five times. This week Callum Ferguson was the 20th player in our 24 player list to win Cricketer of the Week. This then leaves a rather surprising quartet of players who have not topped the weekly list in 2019 - Jos Buttler, Jack Leach and Morne Morkel (a trio we will hear from later) and Kane Williamson - who has never topped the weekly list since we started this in January 2018. Ferguson rightfully deserves his place at the top of the tree this week. To score one century in a week is an achievement; to score two is a rarity. Ferguson's 249 runs in a calendar week has seen him moving up all kinds of tables. He is now the third highest run scorer in this year's Marsh Cup and is now South Australia's all-time leading one day run scorer. His 349 points have also seen him jump a near unprecedented four places on our overall list to finish this week in 16th. With our focus being on the moveable feast at the top of the list, it is easy to miss the fact that places 15 to 20 have just 157 points between them and lot of the movers and shakers in the weekly list come from the lower half of the pack list. Very few places are guaranteed this year.

I have been a little disappointed with Jos Buttler this year. He was a regular feature in the top ten last year and finished 2018 in fifth with 4846 points. This year he has not bothered the top ten and - with six weeks left in the year - is 1815 points off his 2018 total and in a distant twelfth position. His century this week against a New Zealand A side is signs of an upturn in his fortunes but it is indicative that his 190 for the week is the highest score since the ODI series against Pakistan in May - completely bypassing the World Cup and The Ashes. Two memorable stars of the Headingley Test Match have also used the New Zealand A warm up to make a move up the list. Jack Leach, another one of those players to never top the weekly list, has been stuck in the bottom third of the list all season but overhauled Shubman Gill and Morne Morkel this week to move up to 18th. Two weeks ago Ben Stokes was the bottom of the pile in that tightly stacked peloton of players chasing the top 3, however his 173 over the last fortnight has now seen him overtake Joe Root - a man who has long been in the top five but is now sliding down the table at just the wrong time. With a lot of England cricket on the horizon, some of the English boys on our list could force their agenda in the dying embers of the year.

It's been a really disappointing year for Morne Morkel. Last year, Morkel's 59 wickets for Surrey was the second highest in the division and would have earned him 1180 points on wickets alone were he included on our 2018 list. This year he got just 44 - a drop of 300 points. If you compare Morkel's nineteenth position on the overall list to his fellow County Championship stalwarts, in the form of second placed Simon Harmer and third placed Jeetan Patel, you can see just how far off the pace the ex-South African international really is. This week he was overtaken by Jack Leach - which really brings to bear the fact that spinners really are prevailing at the moment, whilst their fats bowling brethren appear to be left in the dust - maybe something that needs to be kept in mind when the 2020 list of players is compiled. This being said, Morkel did move up one place this week - his two wickets for Tshwane against Paarl was enough to see him past the inactive Shubman Gill- however with a handful of games left in 2019 hopes are not high for any further progression.

Week

Callum Ferguson - 349
Jos Buttler - 190
Shai Hope - 178
Jack Leach - 102
Rashid Khan - 98
Ben Stokes - 93
Duanne Olivier - 80
Jeetan Patel - 76
Morne Morkel - 60
Shreyas Iyer - 47
Joe Root - 32
Simon Harmer - 10

Mohammad Abbas - dnp
Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
Jonny Bairstow - dnp
Joe Burns - dnp
Shubman Gill - dnp
Virat Kohli- dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Wayne Parnell - dnp
Abdur Razzak - dnp
Rohit Sharma - dnp
Kane Williamson - dnp
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp

Overall

Glenn Maxwell - 5712
Simon Harmer - 5115
Jeetan Patel - 4461
Rashid Khan - 4012
Virat Kohli- 3901
Ben Stokes - 3879
Shakib Al Hasan -3862
Joe Root- 3852
Rohit Sharma - 3747
Jonny Bairstow - 3725
Shreyas Iyer - 3343
Jos Buttler - 3031
Duanne Olivier - 2961
Wayne Parnell - 2743
Shai Hope - 2616
Callum Ferguson - 2567
Kane Williamson - 2524
Jack Leach - 2500
Morne Morkel - 2498
Shubman Gill - 2459
Mohammad Abbas - 2039
Abdur Razzak- 1925
Kuldeep Yadav - 1760
Joe Burns - 1472

Abdur Razzak - The Best Cricketer of the Week....again

Had you asked me a month ago I would have said the selection of veteran Bangladesh bowler Abdur Razzak was a mistake. Midway through October, Razzak was rooted at the foot of the table and 230 points behind second bottom Joe Burns. Fast forward to this week and Razzak has got Cricketer of the Week three weeks out of the last five and has swelled his total by 1027 points through 31 wickets in the Bangladesh Cricket League. He is now 21st and 453 points above Burns. This week he got 6 wickets for Khulna Division - a mere drop in the ocean to his twelve wickets the previous week but he should probably count himself lucky to become the second player to score back to back positions at the top of the weekly list. His score of 200 is the lowest top-scoring weekly points total since Shreyas Iyer's 142 ten weeks ago, however in a comparatively low scoring week he has the best of the rest of the field. His next target on the overall List is Mohammad Abbas who is just 114 points ahead of him and with the form that the veteran is in you would not put it past him nor begrudge him of it. In fact you would,not begrudge him a return to the national team, something the man himself suggested he was still hopeful for this week.

Witnessing the reshuffle of the top ten over the next few weeks should be lively. Last week I pointed out that there was just 185 points between fourth placed Virat Kohli and tenth placed Ben Stokes. This week there is just 189 points between fourth placed Rashid Khan and tenth placed Jonny Bairstow. Such is the fluidity of the top ten, that two performances from Rashid Khan and Ben Stokes that weren't enough to make the top 5 scores for the week saw everyone between fourth and tenth change spot. A mere two wickets in two matches for Afghanistan saw Rashid Khan overtake the disgraced Shakib Al Hasan - knocking him out of the top five - whilst also displacing a disappointing Virat Kohli, forcing him down to fifth. The figure of Rashid Khan snuggled up against Jeetan Patel and Simon Harmer is very nostalgic for those of us who were following The List last year. Ben Stokes' achievement was more impressive with 80 points from a 20 ball 30 and conceding 33 runs off 8 overs for an England XI in a warm up game against a New Zealand XI. He overtook an inactive Jonny Bairstow and another disappointing Indian batsman in the form of Rohit Sharma.

The performances of Shai Hope can fall into two categories in 2019. Ones where his slow strike rate was punctured by good bowling and those where his slow strike rate was allowed to mature by average bowling and he was able to go on and score big. The common denominator in all of these is......his slow strike rate. In the World Cup, a lot of the blame for this was placed at the feet of Chris Gayle whose pyrotechnics meant that you needed a batsman down the other end who would be able to play safe and keep the wagon rolling. Now we have seen the slightly remodelled West Indies 1.5 that Phil Simmons has put together and we see the same old Hope, we must start to think that this might just be his natural game. This hit and miss attitude has seen Hope underperform in this year's List. His century against Afghanistan this week sees him move into joint 17th place. Normally a player scoring a hundred in an ODI would be jostling for top spot, especially in a low scoring week, however this week Hope was lucky to scrape into the top five as all he registered was the 109 points for his runs plus the thirty bonus for his century. Undeniably the man is a talent. His century this week made him the fifth West Indian to score over a thousand runs in a calendar year, joining the illustrious names of Gayle, Desmond Haynes, Viv Richards and Brian Lara - however his point scoring credentials are negligible.

Week

Abdur Razzak - 200
Shreyas Iyer - 180
Callum Ferguson - 142
Shai Hope - 139
Simon Harmer - 106
Ben Stokes - 80
Mohammad Abbas - 70
Rashid Khan - 61
Joe Root - 51
Jos Buttler - 48
Kuldeep Yadav- 40
Duanne Olivier - 29
Joe Burns - 21
Jack Leach - 20
Rohit Sharma - 18
Virat Kohli - 10
Morne Morkel - 0

Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
Jonny Bairstow- dnp
Shubman Gill - dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Wayne Parnell - dnp
Jeetan Patel - dnp
Kane Williamson- dnp

Overall

Glenn Maxwell - 5712
Simon Harmer - 5105
Jeetan Patel - 4385
Rashid Khan - 3914
Virat Kohli- 3901
Shakib Al Hasan -3862
Joe Root- 3820
Ben Stokes - 3786
Rohit Sharma - 3747
Jonny Bairstow - 3725
Shreyas Iyer - 3296
Duanne Olivier - 2852
Jos Buttler - 2841
Wayne Parnell - 2743
Kane Williamson - 2524
Shubman Gill - 2459
Shai Hope - 2438
Morne Morkel - 2438
Jack Leach - 2398
Callum Ferguson - 2218
Mohammad Abbas - 2039
Abdur Razzak- 1925
Kuldeep Yadav - 1760
Joe Burns - 1472