2019 All Year Fantasy Competition

[The Professor]

Rohit Sharma just fell 20 runs short of beating the all time runs at a World Cup; he scored 5 x 100s, 1 x 50 in 9 innings at a SR that would rank him comfortably in the top ten ever achieved in the history of the game over any sustained period. He has been outscored in this period by someone playing 3 less matches, taking 2 wickets an innings (at a hardly earth-shattering 31 a piece) and scoring 17 runs per trip to the crease.

Taking Sharma's near record breaking return in a WC (and one that came at a far higher SR than the record holder)....... he'd on average get 80 points for his average innings, which would rank at a guess about 30 runs over the best historically achieved career averages. He'd have gotten 10 bonus points for a SR of 99. He'd have gotten a batting bonus of 20..... average return per match, 110 points lets say. Jeetan Patel..... takes 2 x 2-for in a game (80 points)..... scores 17 per innings at SR 60 (34 points)..... achieves a bowling econ of under 4 x 2 (60 points)...... average return per game, 174 points. If he was to take 1 wicket in the first dig, and a 3 for in the second it would increase to 194 (his average wicket return was 4 per completed match). How can these returns be compared so dis-proportionally?

Just take a look at Jeetan's last match.... he takes 3/160 over two innings on a pitch where 3 innings fell below 250 (so essentially he had a horror show on a deck the ball dominated... hes runs conceded amount to the same as his sides first complete innings score)..... he gets a staggering 140 points for that return. 3/160 match return for a bowler comparable to a batsman scoring 110 runs at under SR80 in an innings?

The bowling points scoring ratio is so out of kilter with batters, a part time bowler who takes no wickets but bowls 3 overs an innings without getting utterly annihilated (and assuming said bowler scores a very manageable 5 runs per innings) would beat a batter scoring a 50.

The reward for bowling economy set at under 4 runs for a 4/5 game is essentially a free half century for any bowler who bowls a handful of overs. It would be like saying any batter who is at the crease 18 balls gets an extra 30 runs added to his score, no matter if its an 18 ball duck.

What is your potential solution?

Lowering economy rate points?
Removing economy rate points?

[sussexpob]

What is your potential solution?

Lowering economy rate points?
Removing economy rate points?

Think the only way you get proportional scores coming through is to benchmark each format. You couldnt lower/remove because then you get a bowler concede 15 in a T20, which is a rare and astounding effort, and it isnt credited. But you then compare a united points format to tests; one person in the history of the game with a career over 200 overs has a econ rate above the maximum points threshold. Put that into perspective, a bowler in a normal test match/4 day game is reward 60 points just for playing at a level that is slightly better than the worst bowler ever recorded.... and SR rarely has a baring on a 4/5 day game.

It would be relatively time consuming to benchmark, but easy enough; if from next year its something to consider, I could try to do it.

Although I am probably being an idiot moaning about it, so ignore.

[sussexpob]

Scrub the probably...ill go back to my cave haha

[The Professor]

What is your potential solution?

Lowering economy rate points?
Removing economy rate points?

Think the only way you get proportional scores coming through is to benchmark each format. You couldnt lower/remove because then you get a bowler concede 15 in a T20, which is a rare and astounding effort, and it isnt credited. But you then compare a united points format to tests; one person in the history of the game with a career over 200 overs has a econ rate above the maximum points threshold. Put that into perspective, a bowler in a normal test match/4 day game is reward 60 points just for playing at a level that is slightly better than the worst bowler ever recorded.... and SR rarely has a baring on a 4/5 day game.

It would be relatively time consuming to benchmark, but easy enough; if from next year its something to consider, I could try to do it.

Although I am probably being an idiot moaning about it, so ignore.

What about lowering the economy score?

Currently stands at 30 points for below 4, 20 for below 5 and 10 for below 6.

We could do:

30 points for below 3, 20 for below 4 and 10 for below 5.

or (more controversially)

>6.0 = 5 points
>5.0 = 10
>4.0 = 15
>3.0 = 20
>2.0 = 25
>1.0 = 20

[The Professor]

Or another solution is to say a half century or a century is worth more bonus points...but that gets a bit more sticky.

[sussexpob]

What about lowering the economy score?

The problem is, as discussed above, the lowering of the economy score in limited overs matches then disproportionately removes one of the biggest incentives for bowlers in limited overs.

Maybe something as simple as removing SR/ECON from multi day matches would instantly help balance scoring between bats and bowlers.

[The Professor]

Reluctant to start differentiating the rules for different forms of cricket as that would dilute the charm of this comp.

Also would skew the selection of players away from longer form.

[Durhamfootman]

economy rates are only an issue in FC cricket. what a bowler gains in that, he loses in the T20...... and there is a lot of T20

I think the scoring is fine

[sussexpob]

economy rates are only an issue in FC cricket. what a bowler gains in that, he loses in the T20...... and there is a lot of T20

Is that strictly true though?

The average T20I innings would score 41 points (SR7.87/ average bat gets 21 an innings in the format)...... the average bowler would get on average about 1.5 wickets per match (assuming a 5 man attack, stats from the IPL show guys like Rabada at the top average over two wickets, but using averages)....as 7.5 wickets go down per game. Leaves you with a fine margin between the two of about 10 points..... but then someone like Jeetan Patel also hits 6.9 runs per game, so it thins down to nothing. Over a season if Jeetan was to put one game in where he bowled under 6 an over, the performance average would tip, or in the event he made a 20 at a normal rate, where he'd also get a batting point (SR in T20s is 127, so hes capable).

The average test wicket is valued at 32..... the econ rate is well under 4 as stated below. So it isnt balanced at all, a batsman's run input in the average test match is completely nullified by the econ rate bonus points in the average game. Well not completely, but he gets on average a 4 run bonus.....

[The Professor]

He is top of the pops again. In the 81 weeks we have been monitoring Simon Harmer he has been Cricketer of the Week 13 times but this is the first time he has won the accolade in back to back weeks. This time out it was predominantly his eight wickets plus 43 runs for Essex in the County Championship that saw the South African spinner take the initiative against his compatriots. This match was a battle royale between Essex's Harmer and his next closest rival, Warwickshire's Jeetan Patel. At the start of the week, Patel had a 116 point lead over Harmer, however the veteran New Zealand spinner only mustered half the amount of points that Harmer managed. This has seen the two bowling stalwarts swap positions, with Harmer now 55 points clear of Patel. There is quite a large caveat to this though. We are now entering a month of Vitality Blast games. Despite Harmer being made captain for the shortest form of the game, it is by far his weakest format individually. This can be reflected in the fact that Essex have already played two games in the Blast and Harmer has yielded the grand total of seven runs. Patel equally struggles in the shortest form, but also performed to a decent standard in the Super Smash earlier in the year. I would give Patel the slight edge over Harmer in T20 games so Patel may very well have a month to edge ahead. Alternatively Fourth placed Joe Root may well use the forthcoming Test against Ireland and the Ashes to overturn the 500 points he needs to overtake the both of them. Second to fourth place is all pretty open.

Well the World Cup turned out pretty well in the end. For all the naysayers, moaners and purveyors of scorn, it will go down as a fairly decent edition of the premier international event in world cricket. But who got the most out of it from our list? Twelve competitors from our list of 24 participated in the World Cup, scoring a total of 9764 points between them; but who are the biggest winners and the weediest losers. Three players from our list scored over 1000 points across the tournament: Shakib Al Hasan (1286), Joe Root (1125) and Ben Stokes (1073). These three are the biggest winners from the tournament. Shakib edges it for me due to his 161 extra points on Joe Root. Lest we forget these points were also accrued over three less games than Root and Stokes due to injury and the early elimination of Bangladesh. He is also, by far, the biggest mover up the overall table, starting the competition in 11th place and finishing it in 5th. Ben Stokes moved up from 10th to 7th, whilst Root's massive score of 1125 sees him gain no ground and remain in fourth position. Another big mover was India's Rohit Sharma - accruing 967 points in his 10 games, he finishes the tournament in 8th spot. Now we move to the biggest losers - and I think these are slightly more obvious. In terms of points accrued over the tournament, Kuldeep Yadav continued his poor spell in the IPL to add a paltry 351 across 9 games. This exacerbated his slide down the table going from 16th at the end of May down to 21st this week. As it stands only three players rank lower than Kuldeep; Shubman Gill, Joe Burns, who was out with injury for seven weeks and inactive for a further seven before that and Abdur Razzak, who has not played since April. However that descent of five places is nothing compared to the fall from grace we have seen from Rashid Khan. Starting the tournament in 2nd place, Rashid went on to collect only 351 points in his nine games and now finishes the tournament in 10th. As I have mentioned previously here, Rashid's numbers are way down on 2018 and he will be hoping to use the Vitality Blast to turn this around. Finally there are three other players who have made a negative impact on their overall placings. Virat Kohli's distinctly average World Cup yielded 770 points and saw him drop from 7th to 9th. Jos Buttler did not bat often enough for him to be a massive scorer in the tournament. He scored 669 points and dropped from 8th to 11th. Most surprisingly is Jonny Bairstow who was riding high after the IPL and started the tournament in third place and went on to score 921 points, the sixth highest in the tournament. Bairstow is a victim of the surge up the table of Shakib in the World Cup but also the re-emergence of that man, Harmer. There is still a lot of cricket to play on 2019 and plenty of time for Shakib to drop down again and Kohli and Rashid to fight back but one feels that flops like this could prove decisive when we do our final count in December.



In my analysis of our World Cup performers I was forced to use last week's total of 3805 points for Glenn Maxwell, because The Big Show had very little impact on the biggest stage. With just 573 points he was the third worst performer on our list after Kuldeep and Rashid. The messages about Maxwell's international future are decidedly mixed. On one hand he is a busted flush and Justin Langer would be a laughing stock if he ever looked at him again; on the other hand he was woefully mismanaged and still has something to offer. Whichever way you look at it, he then goes on to join straight back up with Lancashire and forces me to backdate his score as he goes on to score 239 points in a single game against Sussex and finishes second in the weekly table. That's nearly half of what he got in the entire World Cup. Yes, I know Maxwell has only played seven Tests. And yes, I know County Championship Division Two is hardly the crucible of fast bowling that The Ashes will be but for Lancashire, Maxwell has a strike rate of 62.50 with the bat. He has an average of 18.50 with the ball (which is the 13th best in the league). His economy is 2.64 and he has bagged 5/40 against Middlesex. Is he a dead cert for a position in the Test side for The Ashes? Certainly not. Should he be considered a squad option. I think he probably should be.

Week

Simon Harmer - 310
Glenn Maxwell - 239
Shubman Gill - 199
Jack Leach - 190
Jeetan Patel - 159
Ben Stokes - 122
Morne Morkel - 119
Jos Buttler - 106
Duanne Olivier - 102
Mohammad Abbas - 84
Shreyas Iyer - 69
Callum Ferguson - 56
Jonny Bairstow - 36
Kane Williamson - 30
Joe Burns - 28
Wayne Parnell - 20
Joe Root - 17

Shakib Al Hasan - dnp
Shai Hope - dnp
Rashid Khan - dnp
Virat Kohli - dnp
Abdur Razzak - dnp
Rohit Sharma - dnp
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp

Overall

Glenn Maxwell - 4044
Simon Harmer - 3553
Jeetan Patel - 3498
Joe Root- 3091
Shakib Al Hasan - 2990
Jonny Bairstow - 2955
Ben Stokes - 2805
Rohit Sharma - 2598
Virat Kohli- 2587
Rashid Khan - 2504
Jos Buttler - 2476
Kane Williamson - 2404
Duanne Olivier - 2184
Morne Morkel - 2092
Shreyas Iyer - 2053
Shai Hope - 1861
Wayne Parnell - 1773
Mohammad Abbas - 1655
Jack Leach - 1560
Callum Ferguson - 1475
Kuldeep Yadav - 1402
Shubman Gill - 1248
Joe Burns - 900
Abdur Razzak- 898

Headlines

A victory for England sees Arthur move to second.
DFM Zones in on the top three.
DC Rounds on GGAS with his highest score in 21 weeks.

Week

DFM - 394
RD - 358
DC - 321
GGAS - 190
Ian - 159
Arthur - 123
RDJ - 102
The Professor- 97
Alviro - 76
MIB - 36
Sussex - 30
Andy - 0

Overall

RD - 6136
Arthur - 5567
MIB - 5548
DFM - 5228
Sussex - 4988
Andy - 4823
Ian - 4800
GG-AS - 4064
DC - 4053
Alviro- 3185
RDJ - 3082
The Professor- 2961

[Arthur Crabtree]

I presume Buttler and Root will be going into mid-season shutdown soon.

[Durhamfootman]

Bad time to have the Vitality Dribble. Neither of my boys are likely to garner much in the way of points, but for Mo this may be a good time for him to sit down and take a long hard look at himself..... and then get his blooming finger out

cheers Prof

Winter is having a rest for a few weeks

[The Professor]

Joe Burns is not in the Ashes squad.

[The Professor]

In a week where many of the players on our list were still on rest and recuperation, another group played in two or more games. Unsurprisingly it is those players who have featured multiple times that have prospered on our weekly top 5. Wayne Parnell tops the tree after having played in a solitary County Championship Division Two fixture of the week as well as featuring in the T20 Blast, whilst Rashid Khan has played four T20 games for Sussex and Glenn Maxwell and Jeetan Patel have featured three times in the shortest form of the game. This top of the table performance for Parnell marks a return to form after a long period of inactivity. Before last week's score of 20, Parnell had not featured for three weeks. This week's score of 251 is his highest scoring week since Week 21 where he also finished as the Best Cricketer of the Week. This is proof positive that when Parnell plays, he plays well and scores big. As it stands he has been too inconsistent and still languishes at the top of our bottom third, however T20 is Parnell's favoured format so with a return to regular games in the Blast he may well push on up into a mid table pack that are very close together in terms of points.

I will not be surprising anyone with the following statement: Jonny Bairstow is in poor form. In this week's Test against Ireland Jonny Bairstow got a pair, however his batting performances have been long since deteriorating. In his last 22 Tests he averages 27.3. In the previous 22 Tests before that he averaged 54.8. In his last 4 Tests he has scored 35 runs at an average of 5. This is torrid long term form. However if we consult our overall list of the most prolific Cricketers in world cricket we see him 6th, in front of the likes of Virat Kohli and Kane Williamson. However a large slice of these points came from his impeccable spell in the IPL - and it seems like it may be this that has thrown Bairstow off kilter. Anyone watching his unusually aggressive batting stance in his first innings against Ireland, might have been excused for thinking we might have been in over 16 of an IPL game - not a team rocking at 36-3 in a Test match. Bairstow needs to remember the discrete skills that are needed for Test match batting quick smart otherwise he could be in for a humiliating time against Messrs. Hazlewood, Cummins and Pattinson.

Jack Leach, ladies and gentlemen. What is there to say? Leach has had a bit of a renaissance in our overall rankings of late, this being his third time in a row he has featured in the top five for the week - however nobody would have expected him to have done so off the back of his batting. There were stats aplenty about the bespectacled 'all-rounder'. Since 2017, no other England opener apart from Alastair Cook has scored as many runs in an innings at home. This is especially unusual when you look at his most recent innings. Over his last 13 innings Leach's scores were: 1*, 0, 1, 0, 5, 3*, 2*, 5, 5*, 5, 0, 9 and 6. His next score of 92 certainly does seem incongruous. His decent last 3 weeks has seen him pick up 564 points and move from 20th to 17th on the overall list. What is galling for the spinner is that it still looks unlikely that he will make the cut for the Ashes? A return to Somerset will not be a bad thing for his points, but to go from a Man of the Match performance in one Test to be dropped in the next is tough. Another player who has definitely been discarded for The Ashes is Joe Burns. After a protracted lay off due to viral fatigue, Burns returned to action with Australia A and a Graeme Hick XII to score 170 runs in three games, the large bulk of these coming from 133 for Australia A vs Sussex. The preceding scores of 19 and 18 did not please the selectors and they plumped for Wade and Bancroft over Burns. Just as with Leach, this seems harsh. Burns was Australia's top scorer with 180 in Australia's most recent Test and averages 40 in Test cricket with four centuries from 16 Tests. It is slightly less clear what the future holds for Burns. He was contracted to Lancashire before his illness so may return there, otherwise we may be seeing another period away from the game for the man who sits second bottom of our overall list for the year.

Week

Wayne Parnell - 251
Rashid Khan - 203
Glenn Maxwell - 193
Jack Leach - 123
Jeetan Patel - 121
Shubman Gill - 109
Callum Ferguson - 106
Shreyas Iyer - 91
Joe Root- 83
Duanne Olivier - 41
Simon Harmer - 29
Joe Burns - 28
Jonny Bairstow - 10

Mohammad Abbas - dnp
Shakib Al Hassan - dnp
Jos Buttler - dnp
Virat Kohli - dnp
Shai Hope - dnp
Morne Morkel - dnp
Abdur Razzak - dnp
Rohit Sharma - dnp
Ben Stokes - dnp
Kane Williamson - dnp
Kuldeep Yadav - dnp

Overall

Glenn Maxwell - 4237
Jeetan Patel - 3569
Simon Harmer - 3562
Joe Root- 3174
Shakib Al Hasan - 2990
Jonny Bairstow - 2965
Ben Stokes - 2805
Rashid Khan - 2707
Rohit Sharma - 2598
Virat Kohli- 2587
Jos Buttler - 2476
Kane Williamson - 2404
Duanne Olivier - 2225
Shreyas Iyer - 2144
Morne Morkel - 2092
Wayne Parnell - 2024
Shai Hope - 1861
Jack Leach - 1683
Mohammad Abbas - 1655
Callum Ferguson - 1581
Kuldeep Yadav - 1402
Shubman Gill - 1357
Joe Burns - 928
Abdur Razzak- 898

Headlines

Ian overtakes Andy and sets his sights on Sussex

Week

Alviro - 357
GGAS - 326
RD - 193
Ian - 121
The Professor- 119
DC - 109
Arthur - 83
RDJ - 41
DFM - 29
MIB - 10
Andy - 0
Sussex - 0

Overall

RD - 6329
Arthur - 5650
MIB - 5558
DFM - 5257
Sussex - 4988
Ian - 4921
Andy - 4823
GG-AS - 4390
DC - 4162
Alviro- 3542
RDJ - 3123
The Professor- 3080

[GGAS]

Can't say I ever envisaged Leach getting me many points for his batting! Or looking a sturdier player than the entire england batting ranks for that matter.