Cricket-Match-Special ... A forum for discussion

GGAS wrote::dance

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

just having a bit of a rest. Okay, a rest I wasn't expecting, but once I get going, I'll eat up the distance.

I'm like, drinking wine, eating cheese and grabbing a few rays, man...... it's a beautiful bridge!

Before you know it I'll be like the road runner..... beep, beep!

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

Even in the nets?

Alviro Patterson wrote:

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

Even in the nets?

The Prof is watching everywhere!

Rohit out for the rest of the tour

The Professor wrote:Rohit out for the rest of the tour

Here, at the early point of the year, one strong week can see you shoot up the table; taking you from a nowhere man to a challenger. Shubman Gill has had one of those weeks. And he is capable of them. Last year he bagged Cricketer of the Week twice out of nowhere, whilst the likes of Jos Buttler and Kane Williamson ended with none. One of the biggest criticism is his lack of consistency; at times he can look like a world beater but at other times he looks just a jot above average. Before this week he averaged 26.2 with the bat across four matches in 2020 - three against New Zealand A and one Ranji Trophy game. His form was tepid - and it was telling that when Rohit Sharma got injured his name was not even in the frame for a call up despite the fact that it was evident that the replacement was bound to come from the India A team. It was only early February and Gill was already in 17th position - one place off bottom, a placing he was used to throughout 2019. Then he turned his eye to the longest form of the game and got 287 in the first Unofficial Test against New Zealand A and rocketed up the table with his highest ever score since we have been tracking his performances. He now finds his way into the top ten for the first time ever and there is another Test being played as we speak. The problem is Gill struggles to keep his foot on the accelerator. In order to be a major player in this list and in world cricket he needs to eradicate this lack of consistency from his game and be a more ruthless figure. Only time will tell.

Why it happens we will never know, but for the last three years of monitoring the top players in the world Virat Kohli and Joe Root just won't leave each other alone. Week after week and month after month we see the captains of India and England sandwiched together, most often in the overall list but also in the weekly list. This week they both end up in the top five with Root finishing second and Kohli in fifth. On the overall list it is a similar picture with Root in third and Kohli 60 points behind him in 4th. It is not just in point accumulation that these two players are similar. Both seem to be able to grind out a good amount of points very regularly whilst looking unassuming. This week Joe Root got 91 in a warm up match and 17 in the first ODI against South Africa whilst Kohli got 51 and 15 in two ODIs against New Zealand. Solid but not electric - but the two still regularly pick up three figure scores and end in the weekly top five through their consistency. So far this year only three players have scored 100 in four weeks or more: Kohli, Root and Martin Guptill. In the same way as I criticise Gill for not being able to produce Week in Week out, I must laud Kohli and Root for their consistently decent performances.

Keshav Maharaj is one of the most unknown prospects on this year's list. He is the latest in a long list of South African bowlers that we have kept our eye on over the course of these posts. Obviously the most successful was Simon Harmer but last year's inclusion of Duanne Olivier and Morne Morkel proved a little far off the mark. Already in 2020, Maharaj has had some decent performances (a five wicket haul against England for instance) but also some weeks where he has been inactive including missing the final Test. This week he had another decent outing in a different form of the game - getting 143 points and finishing fourth for the week thanks to two Momentum One Day Cup games for the Dolphins. Despite some strong performances, Maharaj has yet to breech the top ten, reaching a high of eleventh the week before last and then returning there this week. Maharaj is undoubtably a talent but he needs to be playing regularly. He could rack up a decent amount of points during the One Day Cup but that could be it for him until he links up with Yorkshire in the County Championship. This being said, with South Africa's next Test series not until July there could be a long spell away from the action for the spinner. The dynamic (semi) all rounder needs to score big whilst the sun shines for fear he may end up as another Saffer damp squib.

Week

Shubman Gill - 377
Joe Root - 188
Martin Guptill- 153
Keshav Maharaj- 143
Virat Kohli- 116
Rohit Sharma- 100
Lewis Gregory - 75
Steve Smith - 61
Tom Banton- 51
Glenn Maxwell - 49
Peter Handscomb - 26

Kyle Abbott - dnp
Colin Ackermann - dnp
Babar Azam- dnp
Aaron Finch- dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Travis Head - dnp
Jason Holder - dnp
Marnus Labuschagne- dnp
Mohammad Nabi - dnp
Ben Stokes - dnp
David Warner - dnp

Overall

Ben Stokes - 809
Martin Guptill - 781
Joe Root - 760
Virat Kohli - 700
Steve Smith - 662
Glenn Maxwell - 650
Marnus Labuschagne - 649
Mohammad Nabi - 590
Shubman Gill - 568
Aaron Finch - 558
Keshav Maharaj - 530
Rohit Sharma - 471
Travis Head - 458
David Warner - 392
Tom Banton - 327
Lewis Gregory - 281
Peter Handscomb - 239
Babar Azam - 116

Headlines

Good week for The Professor who comes out of nowhere with a huge score to knock a static RDJ out of top spot and into third. RD takes the crown by a solitary point.

Alviro and DC knock DC down two places.

MIB in regression; both himself, Banton and Finch have dropped a place in the table every week for the last three weeks.

Week

The Professor- 530
Arthur - 188
RD - 165
Alviro - 143
Ian - 100
DD - 87
Ian - 75
MIB - 51
DC - 0
RDJ - 0
DFM - 0

Overall

RD - 1350
The Professor - 1349
RDJ - 1239
Arthur - 1150
Alviro - 998
DD - 936
DC - 925
MIB - 885
Ian - 471
GG - 281
DFM -0

Well done Prof. Slender lead.

Don't know what Wee Davie is doing not playing cricket in the Aussie summer.

Can Durham do it? Even George Bailey scored a couple of points last year.

still no points?

fix!

Gill is inconsistent in a way that his good form is not prolonged over mutliple tournaments.

Sharma was showing fitness issues last year and injuries catching up probably due to ageing or poor fitness.

Not concerned over my players decline because Finch hasn't played any match in last week and Banton will cover up the points as well after having scores few in last two matches. Not much to panic yet

still no Ackermann for Warriors

I hope he isn't injured

Kohli seems to have forgotten how to score runs ... and now Maxwell is out injured for 2 months!

Through a combination of injury, players being rested and the cessation of the BBL, we have seen the number of non active players jump up hugely this week. We have also seen the list settling down rather. Only four players made any movement on the overall list and we saw a few players make double figure scores and yet it not have an effect on their overall position. This did not apply to our Cricketer of the Week who used an A team tour for it's exact purpose - to showcase your abilities against a weak opponent. Lewis Gregory is an undoubtably talented player and should feel most aggrieved that he happened to reach his cricketing maturation at the same time as Ben Stokes was the most dominant force in world cricket (and the leader of our overall List). In many ways Gregory does exactly what Stokes does....just a little bit worse. His performance this week against a New South Wales XI had a Stokesian aspect to it. Two wickets at an economy of 3.29 plus a 34 ball 55 and a catch in the field is an all round performance that even the Durham man would be proud of. But the difference is that it was against a second string Sheffield Shield side who had three players making their debut. In order to shrug off the mantle of being a store brand Stokes, he needs to be doing this more regularly. His average weekly score for his three active weeks before this week was 93.66 - decent, but this was still against teams of the caliber of a Cricket Australia XI and Dhaka. This week saw him jump from sixteenth to thirteenth and he is already chasing the pack from the top ten. It is still early days for the Somerset player but he needs to up his game to be a force on our List. He is going to be a key player for Peshawar in the PSL which will help, but he will need to improve on his 292 runs he gained for Rangpur in the BPL.

So that is the highest scoring player for the week, however he wasn't the biggest mover up the overall table. That accolade goes to two players I wrote about last week: Shubman Gill and Keshav Maharaj. Gill was a player that I have consistently questioned the consistency of however over the last fortnight he has scored back to back centuries for (what I believe is) the first time in his career. He really is picking up some momentum in his international career and may be forcing his way into a Test berth for the men in blue - especially with the injury to twelfth place Rohit Sharma. This has been reflected in his surge up the table. Last week he bumped his way up the table from seventeenth to ninth; this week he has improved his position by a further five to find himself in fourth position overall. Sandwiched between the figures of Joe Root in third and Virat Kohli in fifth is a very lofty position for the boy from Punjab; how long can he keep his foot on the accelerator? Maharaj also followed in Gill's footsteps with his second top five finish in a row and a five place improvement on the overall table largely thanks to one of his two matches for the Dolphins in the Momentum One Day Cup. His four wickets at an economy of 3.20 coupled with a catch against the bottom of the table Knights saw his dominant franchise continue their impressive spell in the competition and continue to force his own personal agenda as a spinner of high quality. We are used to seeing a South African bowler on the up and up on this list - however it is usually Simon Harmer, who is pointless thus far in the year. We are not even a quarter of the way through this franchise competition yet and with the South African spinner fifteen points off a top five position I wouldn't be surprised to see more progression from the joint highest wicket taker of the tournament.

I said the overall list was settling down quite nicely and Babar Azam is proof of this. Azam is one of the hottest prospects in world cricket but has only featured in two games so far this year - scoring 116 points in one game and zero in the other. At the start of the week he was rock bottom of active players. His impeccable Day Two performance for Pakistan in their First Test against Bangladesh was one of the more high profile performances of the Week and when he went to stumps many were salivating over a potential double ton - however this did not come to pass. Despite this he still finished fourth with 173 points for the week and was part of the 12 point pile up between 1st and 4th. This success for the week has not had the desired impact on his overall placing for the year, however, as he moved up just one place, leap-frogging Peter Handscomb into seventeenth position. Looking further up the table he is another 100 points of sixteenth place Tom Banton - already a gulf is starting to form at the bottom of the table. There will be a lot of cricket to play for Azam as he joins up with Karachi for the PSL, finishes the series with Bangladesh and, ultimately, rejoins Somerset - he will not be this close to the bottom when the final tally is counted. This gulf is probably more concerning for our four inactive players; Kyle Abott, Colin Ackermann, Simon Harmer and Jason Holder. If a top five performance sees you sluggishly crawl from bottom to second bottom, these four players, who are already 239 points (and counting) below our least effective active player they have got a world of catching up to do when they join the melee.

Week

Lewis Gregory - 185
Keshav Maharaj - 184
Shubman Gill - 176
Babar Azam- 173
Ben Stokes - 141
Martin Guptill- 106
Joe Root - 69
Tom Banton - 62
Virat Kohli - 29

Kyle Abbott - dnp
Colin Ackermann - dnp
Aaron Finch- dnp
Peter Handscomb- dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Travis Head - dnp
Jason Holder - dnp
Marnus Labuschagne- dnp
Glenn Maxwell - dnp
Mohammad Nabi- dnp
Rohit Sharma- dnp
Steve Smith - dnp
David Warner - dnp

Overall

Ben Stokes - 950
Martin Guptill - 887
Joe Root - 829
Shubman Gill - 744
Virat Kohli - 729
Keshav Maharaj - 714
Steve Smith - 662
Glenn Maxwell - 650
Marnus Labuschagne - 649
Mohammad Nabi - 590
Aaron Finch - 558
Rohit Sharma - 471
Lewis Gregory - 466
Travis Head - 458
David Warner - 392
Tom Banton - 389
Babar Azam - 289
Peter Handscomb - 239

Headlines

The Professor takes top spot.

DC moves up four places to joint third.

Despite scoring points both Red Devil and Virat drop a position.

DD the only player to see both his players and himself move down the table.

Week

DC - 314
The Professor- 282
GG - 185
Alviro - 184
Arthur - 69
MIB - 62
RD - 29
DD - 0
DFM - 0
Ian - 0
RDJ - 0

Overall

The Professor - 1631
RD - 1379
DC - 1239
RDJ - 1239
Arthur - 1219
Alviro - 1182
MIB - 947
DD - 936
Ian - 471
GG - 466
DFM -0

Lets hope SH and CA turn out for Essex and Leics preseason matches

First warm up game is in April!!

deep joy!

no stuff in Abu Dhabi?