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Don't forget Babar Azam!!

The inaugural Cricketer of the Week accolade for Steven Peter Devereux Smith comes in Week 106 of these posts. Smith was selected in 2018 but active for just eight of those before the Sandpaper incident and a spell away from the game. 2019 saw him not selected however an historic Ashes performance sees him back for 2020 and the Australian player will want to prove the faith that the selectors have shown in him. In the first three weeks of the year he has been outside the top ten however in a week where he played three fixtures 6329 miles apart he bagged a century for Australia in Bengaluru and then nabbed a half century in the BBL for the Sydney Sixers. This has seen the ex-Australia captain leap six places in the overall List, the most for any player this week, and take fourth position - his highest ever placing. He also becomes the third Australian in a row to get the best Cricketer of the Week after Marnus Labuschagne's victory a fortnight ago and Travis Head's BBL inspired performance seven days ago. As Steve Smith starts to regain his mastery with the bat he is also rehabilitating his reputation in both international and domestic cricket. A season like last year's will see his position within the top ten assured - but does he dare to dream of a top 5 finish?

It's been a bit of a topsy turvy series between South Africa and England. Both team's have oscillated between looking pathetic and impressive in equal measure. Player's performances as well as captaincy decisions have been variable at best. Two players that best exemplify this are England captain Joe Root and South African spinner Keshav Maharaj. Both these players have had good weeks - but with the opposite discipline that you would expect them to showcase their talents in. Joe Root finished just outside the top five for the week and moved from joint 12th place to 9th in the overall list thanks to 197 points in the Third Test. Root is England's tenth highest all-time Test run scorer but only 13.7% of his points this week came from the bat. He is also a canny fielder but an even smaller amount - 5% - came from his prowess in the slips. Instead it was his 4-87 where the lion's share of his points came - 67.51% to be precise. In stark contrast we see a South African player selected for his skills with the ball who went on to excel with the bat. Keshav Maharaj's average sat at 12.17 before the second innings in Port Elizabeth. He then got 71 to make England work for their victory. Again this boosted the Durban born player's total for the considerably. Whilst the share of points is not as stark thanks to a five-fer earlier in the match, 27.20% of his points coming from the bat is not a bad day out for the tailender and helped him move up four places into eleventh and finish second overall for the week. Could these players turn into formidable allrounders? It seems unlikely as both performances were forced out of them by circumstance, however it is a very good string to have in your bow when the chips are down.

There have been some good times for Ben Stokes in the first 25 days of 2020. There were of course very many good days for the England all-rounder in 2019 too - however he has hit the ground running this year to a much greater extent than he did last year. Stokes made hay while the sun shone in the high to late months of Summer but was already quite far behind the chasing pack. This year he has begun strongly. Thanks to the nature of a Test match series he has been inactive every other week but debuted in Week 2 in second place overall, dropped to fifth in his active third week and has then fought back up to second spot with 210 points from the Third Test. This takes his total for 2020 to 589 - at the corresponding time in 2019 he was lagging behind with a mere 166. This is largely down to the vagaries of the cricketing calendar. This year he has played two Tests whilst in 2019 he had played two warm up games against a West Indies' President's XI - however in neither of those matches did he score the same amount of points that he has managed against a full strength South African team. If Stokes can keep up his late 2019 and early 2020 form throughout the year he will be hard to elbow out of the top five.

Week

Steve Smith- 316
Keshav Maharaj- 261
Mohammad Nabi- 233
Ben Stokes - 210
Virat Kohli - 204
Joe Root - 197
Aaron Finch- 188
Rohit Sharma - 176
Peter Handscomb - 172
Marnus Labuschagne- 141
Babar Azam - 116
Glenn Maxwell - 82
Martin Guptill- 70
Travis Head - 70
Shubman Gill - 30
David Warner - 3

Kyle Abbot - dnp
Colin Ackermann- dnp
Tom Banton - dnp
Lewis Gregory - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Jason Holder - dnp

Overall

Marnus Labuschagne - 601
Ben Stokes - 589
Glenn Maxwell - 565
Steve Smith - 547
Martin Guptill - 510
Mohammad Nabi - 502
Virat Kohli - 474
Aaron Finch - 455
Joe Root - 405
David Warner - 392
Keshav Maharaj - 387
Travis Head - 319
Tom Banton - 263
Rohit Sharma - 238
Peter Handscomb - 209
Lewis Gregory - 206
Shubman Gill - 191
Babar Azam - 116

Headlines

RDJ retakes the lead as no fewer than 6 places stack up in the 700s chasing third place.

Week

DD - 489
RDJ - 374
Alviro - 331
DC - 326
RD - 288
Arthur - 200
MIB - 188
Ian - 176
The Professor- 110
DFM - 0
GG - 0

Overall

RDJ - 1103
RD - 1039
Arthur - 795
DD - 791
Alviro - 716
MIB - 708
DC - 705
The Professor - 701
Ian - 238
GG - 206
DFM -0

wah, wah, wah, waaaaaah

cheers Prof

Durhamfootman wrote:wah, wah, wah, waaaaaah

cheers Prof

cheers, buddy

isn't it strange that I can spend so much time considering who to pick and then still not think it through properly?

in my defence, both Harmer and Ackermann had SA domestic contracts this time last year, but I should have checked whether that was still the case.... which it isn't

I got suckered into assuming that the only reason Ackermann hadn't played up to now was because of his new Netherland's commitments, whilst Harmer was playing for Jozi in the Mzansi. I should have checked

still.... they might both rack up 5,000 or 6,000 points each over the course of the county season and I'll come in first at a canter

Durhamfootman wrote:cheers, buddy

isn't it strange that I can spend so much time considering who to pick and then still not think it through properly?

in my defence, both Harmer and Ackermann had SA domestic contracts this time last year, but I should have checked whether that was still the case.... which it isn't

I got suckered into assuming that the only reason Ackermann hadn't played up to now was because of his new Netherland's commitments, whilst Harmer was playing for Jozi in the Mzansi. I should have checked

still.... they might both rack up 5,000 or 6,000 points each over the course of the county season and I'll come in first at a canter

indeed - long way to go yet and this comp is particularly hard to predict

Ackers is in the Warriors momentum cup squad

dare I dream?

The Ben Stokes roadshow continues to run on as the controversy shrouded redhead bumps from moment to moment drawing headlines and match winning performances in equal measure. This week the casual observer of our fine sport would have noted Stokes for his profanity laden response to provocation from a bespectacled South African - however, as ever, there was much more to it than that. Stokes is developing a natural affinity to shelve whatever else is going on in his private life - be it biased media reports, family concerns or accolades - and win matches. The final Test in the South African series was another Stokes special. No pyrotechnics this time. 30 runs across both innings and a pair of pairs with the ball - but all round contributions from the Durham man. He scored points all around the disciplines - 22.73% with the bat, 59.09% with the ball and 18.18% in the field. Yet again he showed his ability to switch through the gears with his batting performance when needed. His second innings 28 from 24 balls was not Headingley-esque but hinted at the formula that Silverwood's England have been flirting with; a fully rounded Test team who can draw upon their experience in all formats of the game when the match calls for it - and who better to exemplify that ethos than Stokes? His list topping performance this week is his fourth overall but this is the first time that he has ever taken the top spot of the Overall List. He has a comfortable 160 point lead over Marnus Labuschagne. Stokes has six more games in South Africa whilst Labuschagne's Brisbane are now out of the BBL. A chance for Stokes to really force his agenda and his lead in 2020.

You can split the Australians in our list into two categories. One category is long in the tooth established veterans such as Messrs. Finch, Smith and Warner; the other is more peripheral figures who are hoping to force their way into the Australian cricketing fraternity for the next decade. Marnus Labuschagne has been leading this list having never been out of the top two since his debut in Week 2 - however there is another figure who has rather more quietly been impressing. Travis Head is in tenth position on the overall list but has finished third this week after taking top spot two weeks ago. He started the year poorly with just 10 runs in the last Test between Australia and New Zealand however scored 142 runs in the last Test in 2019. Whilst his international brethren were in India, Head stayed behind and put his efforts behind Adelaide's late BBL push - and was instrumental in his team losing just three of their last 8 games. You can also see how much Adelaide relied on their wicket keeper batsman. When Head failed they did too. But those failures did not happen too often; 8 against Brisbane and 5 against Melbourne Stars were his two lowest scores in this run of games with his next lowest being 22 against the Melbourne Renegades. Across the final eight games of the BBL season, Head averaged 28.5 - including the second game against Brisbane where he was not asked to bat thanks to the dominance of Phil Salt and Jake Weatherald. Despite this success Head has not been able to get any higher than ninth position on the overall List - a return to longer form cricket with South Australia in the Sheffield Shield may redress this.

Martin Guptill's high performance on our overall List cannot continue much longer can it? Every year we have been keeping track of the top Cricketers in the world there has always been an early front runner that flew out of the blocks and didn't seem to tire for months and months. In 2018 it was JP Duminy who was in the top five for the first three months before disappearing and finishing outside the top ten. Last year it was Shakib Al Hasan who refused to go away for a long period of time - despite how much we wanted him to when he brought the game into disrepute. This year it is Guptill. There has been a lot of opportunities for him to fade away but he keeps on moving back up the table. Guptill finished first in Week One before falling back to fourth in Week Two as the Super Smash competition came to an end. You would expect the veteran New Zealander to exploit the green bowling of Kiwi newbies in that particular competition but surely that's enough? He then got 213 in Week Three and moved back into third. But again....domestic cricket! Who cares? Next up for Guppy was India. He started with a sanguine 30 and back down to fifth again - "he's starting to be found out by world class bowlers" you may have thought. However he followed this up by two other scores in the thirties this week and finishes third for the week and is third overall yet again! What next for Guptill? Back to domestic cricket with Auckland and those green bowlers again. Can Guptill keep this up? I wouldn't put it past him.

Week

Ben Stokes - 220
Joe Root - 167
Travis Head- 139
Rohit Sharma - 133
Martin Guptill- 118
Aaron Finch - 113
Virat Kohli- 110
Mohammad Nabi- 88
Steve Smith - 54
Marnus Labuschagne - 48
Glenn Maxwell - 36
Tom Banton - 13
Peter Handscomb- 4

Kyle Abbott - dnp
Colin Ackermann- dnp
Babar Azam - dnp
Shubman Gill - dnp
Lewis Gregory - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Jason Holder- dnp
Keshav Maharaj- dnp
David Warner - dnp

Overall

Ben Stokes - 809
Marnus Labuschagne - 649
Martin Guptill - 628
Steve Smith - 601
Glenn Maxwell - 601
Mohammad Nabi - 590
Virat Kohli - 584
Joe Root - 572
Aaron Finch - 558
Travis Head - 458
David Warner - 392
Keshav Maharaj - 387
Rohit Sharma - 371
Tom Banton - 276
Peter Handscomb - 213
Lewis Gregory - 206
Shubman Gill - 191
Babar Azam - 116

Headlines

Lots of similar scores so that bunch of players in the 700s all move into the 800s.
DC breaks away to try and reel in Arthur who finishes third for the third week in a row.
Bad week for MIB who sees both his players and himself move down the table.

Week

DC - 220
Arthur - 167
RD - 146
Alviro - 139
RDJ - 136
Ian - 133
MIB - 126
The Professor- 118
DD - 58
DFM - 0
GG - 0

Overall

RDJ - 1239
RD - 1185
Arthur - 962
DC - 925
Alviro - 855
DD - 849
MIB - 834
The Professor - 819
Ian - 371
GG - 206
DFM -0

Thanks Prof. Wonder how long Durham can take his pristine zero into the new decade.

Well, Ackermann doesn't play in the Warriors first game so maybe another week.

Gregory picked a couple wickets for the Lions, does he get those points in next week's run?

The Professor wrote:Well, Ackermann doesn't play in the Warriors first game so maybe another week.

GGAS wrote:Gregory picked a couple wickets for the Lions, does he get those points in next week's run?

Every bowl bowled, every run scored, every catch caught counts

I'll be leaving DFM for dead in the spoon slot at this rate!

The Professor wrote:

GGAS wrote:Gregory picked a couple wickets for the Lions, does he get those points in next week's run?

Every bowl bowled, every run scored, every catch caught counts

it's the Prof's mission