2020 All Year Fantasy Competition

[Arthur Crabtree]

Played Guppy.

[The Professor]

Martin Guptill is an unlikely star man for the first week of 2020. Picked in this list specifically because he has gone unselected in the major tournaments of the year - he has done just what you would expect of him in a third tier T20 competition and utterly dominated with the bat. He is now the captain of Auckland and played a captain's innings on New Year's Day with a score of 83* against Canterbury before following this up yesterday with 22 against Central Districts - both achieved with strike rates in the 100s. Guptill will not play as much in 2020 as he did in 2019 and he is nowhere near the talismanic player he was in his heyday - about 2015 - but at just over 33 he is nowhere near the scrap heap just yet. What can be guaranteed is that when he does play he will score big against unrecognised bowlers at an impressive strike rate. It is a formula that we have seen before. The fact that Guptill is at something of a loose end throughout the IPL and The Hundred may work to his advantage on our list. If one of your overseas players gets injured, Marty will be on the end of the phone. Until then he will be eyeing up T10 leagues and second and third tier T20 competitions such as the MSL, the Global T20 Canada completion and the much anticipated Euro T20 Slam. Are these halcyon days for Guptill? No. Might they be profitable days? Very possibly.

Another player who will play an awful lot of franchise cricket in 2020 is Mohammad Nabi. He debuts in our overall list in third position and will cover a lot of ground, use a lot of air miles and may very well rack up a fair few wickets and runs in 2020. Currently plying his trade for Rangpur in the BPL, the Afghanistan all rounder started his year with a wicket from each of his two games this week as well as modest scores of 5 and 23 with the bat. Nabi too has something Guptillian about him. This is exemplified by his last game of the week against Sylhet. The eastern Bangladesh franchise are bottom of the table with Nabi's Rangpur just a single place above them so Nabi will be disappointed with scoring just 23 runs off them - however he did so at a strike rate of 135.29, enough to score him the extra twenty points to see him overtake his team mate Lewis Gregory and take third place for the week. There is a slight long term issue for Nabi. Whilst Guptill is likely to feature for his national team in ODIs and T20s fairly soon - Afghanistan do not have any fixtures in the diary yet until the T20 World Cup until October! Although this is obviously not going to remain the case, there are no national games on the horizon for the number one ranked T20I and number two ODI all-rounder. He really will need to fill his boots in those franchise competitions.

You can't keep him away from the top of our Overall List. This is the first week since late February 2019 that Glenn Maxwell has not been in the box seat of our rankings - but he is not too far off the pace. His Nelson score this week sees him 54 points below Guptill and primed for another move up the table as the Big Bash rumbles on for another thousand games. His two performances for the Melbourne Stars this week underline what he brings to the table in these rankings. In the first game he was the effective bowler. The wickets of Alex Hales and Usman Khawaja are prime scalps for any established bowler...but The Big Show got 'em within his first two overs. He is proving a very effective surprise opening bowler - something we saw with Lancashire in the Royal London One Day Cup last year. Then came his second game - the Derby against the Melbourne Renegades. Here he was the batsmen extraordinaire with 40 off 32 balls to arrest a bit of a slide for his team and take them to a fifth win of the season and keep them at the top of the table. This form could see him start 2020 as he ended 2019. The dominant Cricketer in the world.

Week

Martin Guptill - 165
Glenn Maxwell - 111
Mohammad Nabi - 98
Lewis Gregory - 75
Aaron Finch - 64
Peter Handscomb - 34
Tom Banton - 15

Kyle Abbott - dnp
Colin Ackerman- dnp
Babar Azam - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Travis Head - dnp
Jason Holder - dnp
Virat Kohli - dnp
Marnus Labuschagne - dnp
Keshav Maharaj - dnp
Joe Root - dnp
Rohit Sharma- dnp
Steve Smith - dnp
Ben Stokes- dnp
David Warner - dnp

Overall

Martin Guptill - 165
Glenn Maxwell - 111
Mohammad Nabi - 98
Lewis Gregory - 75
Aaron Finch - 64
Peter Handscomb - 34
Tom Banton - 15

Week

The Professor - 165
RD - 111
RDJ - 98
MIB - 79
GG - 75
DD - 34
Alviro - 0
Arthur - 0
DC- 0
DFM -0
Ian - 0

[Red Devil]

True - Guptill could be very dangerous!

[Durhamfootman]

does he play enough?

[The Professor]

Marnus Labuschagne's performance in the first innings of his Test match against New Zealand was very obviously going to make him Cricketer of the Week. Even as I was writing last week's post, it was already very clear that his 215 in the first innings was going to knock some of the early T20 leaders out the park. However his monumental first innings score was only half the tale - literally. His 59 in the second innings boosted his score and whilst his part time bowling yielded no wickets it allowed the South African born Australian to pick up 60 points for his economy. When all this is totted up it reaches a huge total of 404. As a rule of thumb, 400 is my normal barometer for the threshold between a great week and an exceptional one. In the whole of 2019 there were just six instances of players breaching the 400 point mark (Maxwell, Sharma, Harmer, Khan, Parnell and Iyer) and for Labuschagne to do so in just his first outing on the list is something very special. In fact his 404 for the week is the second highest debut Week in the history of The Cricket List; trailing Sunil Narine's 487 from 2018. The question now is whether Labuschagne can do an 'inverse Jason Roy' and be rewarded for his Test performances with a call up to the ODI side. He averaged a mere 17.57 in last year's Royal London One Day Cup with Glamorgan - however it is becoming increasingly clear that the young man is in phenomenal touch so would be worth a crack.

Ben Stokes had another one of those headline grabbing weeks this week. Stokes is regularly having to be relied on for getting England out of holes and whilst this makes great viewing and continues to build up the legend of the Durham all rounder it does rather mask the underlining issues in the England set up. His 91 vs New Zealand, that 135* at Headingley, the century against Lords, the 84* in the World Cup final are all great moments in sporting history and, dizzyingly, all came within the last nine months but are remarkable for the fact that they inspired an insipid England team to actually muster themselves to try something a little more three dimensional. A Ben Stokes-less universe is not one worth thinking about. However we do not need to worry about that because his all round prowess is firmly rooted in the English set up - and he was the true all rounder this week. From his haul of 119 runs, those three wickets to seal the game and becoming the first England fielder to take five catches in a single Test innings, Stokes didn't so much make his mark on this Test but branded his imprint into it's flesh. He slots straight into second position on the overall List, his highest ever finish to a week. England will hope not to rely so heavily on him in the next two Tests however he will be challenging for top spot in the form he is in.

We are used to seeing Glenn Maxwell near the top of both the weekly list and our overall list. This week he has dropped a place (!) and is third overall and third for the week - however his total of 262 points from two BBL games includes 142 runs with both outings including strike rates over 150 and has seen him one of two players to cling on to their top five positions alongside Martin Guptill. The frightening thing for everyone on this list is that Maxwell, the number one Cricketer on our overall list for 42 weeks in 2018, has said that after a sabbatical away from the game he feels he can come back improved. Improved! A genuinely startling proposition. He is currently second to Marcus Stoinis in terms of runs scored in this year's BBL and is also offering something with the ball with, the fifteenth lowest economy of all bowlers - arguably the highest allrounder on the list dependant on your definition of all rounders. Maxwell has three games in the next week. Stokes, who is just three points ahead of the Australian, will not have finished the third Test by next weekend whilst Labuschagne's ODI inclusion is questionable so we may see Maxwell back at number one by next week.

Week

Marnus Labuschagne- 404
Ben Stokes - 379
Glenn Maxwell - 262
Joe Root - 206
David Warner - 186
Tom Banton - 158
Lewis Gregory - 131
Virat Kohli- 126
Keshav Maharaj - 126
Steve Smith - 83
Mohammad Nabi - 72
Martin Guptill- 62
Shubman Gill - 27
Travis Head - 10
Aaron Finch - 10
Peter Handscomb - 3

Kyle Abbott - dnp
Colin Ackermann - dnp
Babar Azam - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Jason Holder - dnp
Rohit Sharma - dnp


Overall

Marnus Labuschagne - 404
Ben Stokes - 379
Glenn Maxwell - 373
Martin Guptill - 227
Joe Root - 206
Lewis Gregory - 206
David Warner - 186
Mohammad Nabi - 170
Tom Banton - 158
Virat Kohli - 126
Keshav Maharaj - 126
Steve Smith - 83
Aaron Finch - 74
Peter Handscomb - 37
Shubman Gill - 27
Travis Head - 10

Headlines

All change.

Huge score for RDJ as he and Pop lead us out.


Week

RDJ - 574
Arthur - 392
RD - 388
DC - 379
MIB - 153
Alviro - 136
GG - 131
The Professor - 89
DD - 86
DFM - 0
Ian - 0

Overall

RDJ - 574
RD - 499
Arthur - 392
DC - 379
The Professor - 254
MIB - 232
GG - 206
Alviro - 136
DD - 120
DC- 0
DFM -0
Ian - 0

[Durhamfootman]

looks as though my boys may make me wait for a while. I could be having to come from a long way back

[DiligentDefence]

Not that it makes a lot if difference but I make my score for the week 120. and hence toal 154.

[The Professor]

Oh apologies

Updated you weekly score but not your overall

[The Professor]

Yet again an antipodean Cricketer tops our weekly List. First came Guptill, then came Labuschagne and now Travis Head earns Cricketer of the Week. In his debut week on The Cricket List, Travis Head scored ten points which is second only to Hashim Amla's score of 7 in 2018 in terms of lowest opening scores. Expectations were low. Head was then not selected for the ODI tour of India so packed up his royal blue kit and unpacked the sky blue of Adelaide and prepared for some BBL action. Over the course of the last seven days, Head has played four games of cricket and scored 109 runs - with two scores at a strike rate of 100 or over - and has also helped himself to two wickets along the way. His stand out performance came this morning against Hobart where his 79 off 40 balls saw him gain 139 of his 249 points for the week. If it were not for that match, Head would have been languishing in joint eighth for the week rather than taking top spot. As you would imagine, Head has jumped up the overall List this week. He ended last week at the very foot of the table and has now jumped seven places to just squeeze into the top ten. On this sort of performances, Head may feel aggrieved that he was not selected for the India matches. With a question mark over the middle order that has seen Starc being experimented with up the order and question marks over Alex Carey's position in the team, performances like today's may see Head become a feature in all three disciplines of the game for Australia.

And Travis Head is not the only Aussie having a rather good time of it so far in 2020. This week Four of our top five players are from the land down under whilst Glenn Maxwell and Marnus Labuschagne, who did not score huge points this week, are first and second on the overall List. Two players whose synchronicity in the middle has been mirrored on our list are David Warner and Aaron Finch. Their performance in the ODI against India was a sight to behold and the way the two players dovetailed together was signs that the pair, who have been playing together for the national side since 2013, know each other inside out. We cannot even separate them in our list this week as Warner finishes third for the week with 203 whilst Finch is in fourth with 183. They both also climb up three places in the overall table with Warner sliding into the top five for the first time ever and Finch taking tenth place. By some distance this is Warner's highest ever placing on The Cricket List as his 2018 showings were rather....hampered and he was not selected in 2019. As he shrugs off the pejorative title of being a flat track bully this really could be the year he forces his agenda.

Virat Kohli is doing the same as Virat Kohli always does in this List. Just plug away quietly oscillating between very impressive performances, influential cameos and periods of disappointment. This week was a mixture of three of these. His score of 16 in the mauling by Australia was evidently a disappointment whilst his 78 runs off 76 balls in the second ODI was an influential part of providing a spine for Shikar Dhawan and KL Rahul to build up from - however we saw nothing explosive. Kohli's most explosive batting performances are saved for lesser sides and he relies on dependability when the big boys come to town. Kohli's biggest scoring weeks in both 2018 and 2019 came from a duo of two back to back centuries against the West Indies. Many raise questions with regards to his lack of runs against the big boys. In football, one of the most stinging criticisms of a professional is that they disappear in big games. Mesut Ozil is a prime example of this; some of his most memorable performances come against Everton and Sunderland however when Manchester United, Chelsea or Manchester City come visiting he is a ghost. Is Virat Kohli the Mesut Ozil of international cricket? This week he hangs just outside the top 5 in sixth position - the exact same position as he occupies in the overall table. An inarguably talented player but always ever so slightly just off the pace of being a true legend of the game.

Week

Travis Head - 249
Martin Guptill - 213
David Warner - 203
Aaron Finch - 183
Steve Smith - 146
Virat Kohli - 144
Shubman Gill - 124
Glenn Maxwell - 110
Tom Banton - 105
Mohammad Nabi - 99
Rohit Sharma- 62
Marnus Labuschagne- 56

Kyle Abbott- dnp
Colin Ackermann - dnp
Babar Azam- dnp
Lewis Gregory - dnp
Peter Handscomb - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Jason Holder - dnp
Keshav Maharaj- dnp
Joe Root - dnp
Ben Stokes - dnp

Overall

Glenn Maxwell - 483
Marnus Labuschagne - 460
Martin Guptill - 440
David Warner - 389
Ben Stokes - 379
Virat Kohli - 270
Mohammad Nabi - 269
Tom Banton - 263
Travis Head - 259
Aaron Finch - 257
Steve Smith - 231
Joe Root - 206
Lewis Gregory - 206
Shubman Gill - 151
Keshav Maharaj - 126
Rohit Sharma - 62
Peter Handscomb - 37

Headlines

RD sends RDJ to his room and gets top spot.
A duck from DC sees him drop like a stone.
Alviro is the biggest mover up the table
DFM is the last out the gate.

Week

The Professor - 337
MIB - 288
RD - 254
Alviro - 249
Arthur - 203
RDJ - 155
DD - 148
Ian - 62
DC - 0
DFM - 0
GG - 0

Overall

RD - 753
RDJ - 729
Arthur - 595
The Professor - 591
MIB - 520
Alviro - 385
DC - 379
DD - 231
GG - 206
Ian - 62
DFM -0

[The Professor]

Maxwell and RD in top spot.....seems familiar

[Durhamfootman]

DFM is the last out the gate.

I might have stuffed up

my 2 Saffers seem to be having an extended break from cricket.

I might still be on nought in mid March

[Arthur Crabtree]

Slapsie could do with a rest.

Root is on a winter tour and he hasn't batted in the last week.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Honest Joe took a few wickets today though.

Hopefully a few more tomorrow.

[GGAS]

Was hoping Holder would either rip apart Ireland, or rip apart the WI 4 day stuff, but alas, it seems he is sat in the sun with his feet up. Part-timer!

[Durhamfootman]

Was hoping Holder would either rip apart Ireland, or rip apart the WI 4 day stuff, but alas, it seems he is sat in the sun with his feet up. Part-timer!

he might be at a BBQ with Harmer and Ackermann