2018 All Year Fantasy Competition

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7th

[The Professor]

Gulp

http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/ ... 20-cricket

May prove problematic going forward.

[Durhamfootman]

Interesting idea, but I imagine the only people who use this info will be the teams when buying players, and the players when making their wage demands........... and the chattering classes, of course. I have no doubt that Mark yawn Nicholas, Danny effervescent Morrison and Ravi *modded* Shastri will know the numbers inside and out and use them to irritate their audience even more than they do already

[Arthur Crabtree]

Mark oleaginous Nicholas surely.

[Durhamfootman]

oleaginous describes all 3, but you know me.... why use one word when half a dozen will do

[Durhamfootman]

ooh... Harmer is warming up with Essex in the Uni game. I wasn't really expecting that, but any points he makes will be most welcome (assuming the weather lets him make any points)

[The Professor]

This week sees the end of the first quarter of the season completed - and a dramatic one it has been. With the Summer Tests and domestic tournaments over on the other side of the equator at an end and the IPL about to start, it seems a good point to take stock, not only of where the players are but also where they will be heading in the coming weeks.

In an age where many cricketing cynics say that the County Championship is dying, it is perhaps pleasing to see so many of our top players about to start their season in that illustrious competition. Two players that will hope to hit the ground running are Jeetan Patel, this week's cricketer of the week, and Simon Harmer. I feel that over the last few weeks I have been bracketing these two bowlers together to their detriment. They are both outstanding bowlers in their own right who have been toiling away for Wellington and Warriors respectively. Patel is defying Old Father Time and becoming Mr Five-fer this year. His five wicket haul against Auckland was his fifth in as many matches and, as mentioned last week, has seen him rocket up the table. The New Zealander is now set to travel the twelve thousand miles from Wellington to Birmingham where he will represent Warwickshire. The veteran bowler will fancy his chances at extending his haul of wickets against some Division Two batting line ups and helping his team back up into Division 1. Harmer, keen to extend his run of good form, has taken advantage of the fact that the Sunfoil Series wrapped up a week ago to already make the journey over to England and is currently representing Essex in their warm up game against Cambridge MCCU. The challenge for Harmer is to keep up the sparkling form that has seen him top the wicket taking league in the last two tournaments he has played in. Such a gargantuan effort would be more of a challenge of focus and stamina than it would be talent but it seems Harmer does not lack in any of those disciplines. He finishes the first leg of 2018 in second place overall being one of only two players to break the 2000 point mark.

Had Joe Root got his way he would have been getting on the plane in New Zealand and hopping over to India to represent one of the franchises in the IPL. Instead the England captain is heading back to Yorkshire to represent his home County. Going against those In the ECB as well as his better instincts that have told him to remain wary of the cash cow in previous years, he put his hand up for the tournament and remained unpicked. Whilst this may have aggrieved him short term, the batsman finds himself short of runs - despite the fact he finished third in our weekly rundown of players and fifth overall. For the last two weeks Root has got more points from fielding and bowling than he has from batting. In fact his entire tour of Australia and New Zealand sees him with an average of 40 and a high score of 82. Root is off the pace with his batting and this is something that the IPL would probably have exacerbated rather than cured. A return to an arena that he fells more comfortable in and with more parochial batting conditions may help him return to form with the bat and keep his top ten position.

In the IPL this year it is expected that overall table topping Rashid Khan will slot back into the Sunrisers Hyderabad team and be a pivotal member of their campaign. He has been rested since mid March and the miracle escape job Afghanistan pulled off in the World Cup Qualifiers. Despite his team's early season stutters, Khan was able to regularly pick up wickets in the 50 over games. In his return to his more favoured T20 format, the nineteen year old is likely to go from strength to strength. His position at the top of our overall table seems relatively comfortable for the time being.

The last four players are expected to pick up more points in the coming weeks but the only player that features in both our weekly and our overall rankings is not in action in the IPL or the County Championship. Nathan Lyon's performances have been one of the only silver linings from a very dark cloud of a series for Australia. He has chipped in with regular wickets, got hatloads of maidens with low economies and also contributed with the bat in one innings. He currently sits in third place but with those representing IPL franchises or County Championship teams below him, he could find himself sliding down the rankings.

One thing that is very clear from the players who have stood out in this first chapter of 2018 is that spin is king. With Patel, Harmer, Lyon, Khan and (at a push) Root all in the mix, it is clear that spin is the way to go.

Week

Jeetan Patel - 313
Nathan Lyon - 277
Joe Root- 186
Dean Elgar - 150
AB De Villiers - 105
Quinton de Kock- 93
Mitchell Marsh - 79
Hashim Amla - 53
Shaun Marsh - 33
Kane Williamson - 22
Shakib Al Hassan - dnp
Ravi Ashwin- dnp
Jofra Archer - dnp
George Bailey - dnp
Jos Buttler - dnp
JP Duminy- dnp
Aaron Finch - dnp
Rashid Khan - dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Ravi Jadeja- dnp
Virat Kohli - dnp
Sunil Narine- dnp
Steve Smith - dnp
David Warner - dnp

Overall

Rashid Khan - 2078
Simon Harmer - 2011
Nathan Lyon - 1789
JP Duminy - 1671
Joe Root - 1615
Sunil Narine- 1450
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
Jeetan Patel - 1414
Virat Kohli- 1231
AB De Villiers- 1100
Kane Williamson -1080
Jos Buttler - 1026
Aaron Finch - 999
Dean Elgar- 932
Quinton de Kock - 881
Ravi Ashwin - 878
David Warner - 752
Hashim Amla - 723
Steve Smith - 706
Shakib Al Hasan - 662
George Bailey - 631
Shaun Marsh- 565
Jofra Archer - 550
Ravi Jadeja - 412

Headlines

Not much change in terms of order.

FTS zones in on The Professor

Andy and DC get their third duck in a row.

Arthur gets his first duck in a Warner-less future.

Week

FTS - 427
DFM - 313
GG-AS - 186
RDJ - 172
Andy - 127
Adi - 53
Red Devil - 33
Andy - 0
Arthur - 0
DC - 0
The Professor- 0

Overall

GG-AS - 3693
DFM - 3425
The Professor - 3121
FTS - 2721
Red Devil Jr - 2306
Andy - 2180
Adi - 1964
Rich - 1904
Dr Cricket - 1549
Arthur - 1337
Red Devil - 1317
Ian - 1074

[Durhamfootman]

gap is down to 270 and I hopefully get a Harmer bonus next week

[Durhamfootman]

ooh... Harmer is warming up with Essex in the Uni game. I wasn't really expecting that, but any points he makes will be most welcome (assuming the weather lets him make any points)

bloody weather

[The Professor]

Stuck in Bristol City Centre tomorrow morning with nowt to do while they fix my car so we might see a Friday weekly update

[GGAS]

Stuck in Bristol City Centre tomorrow morning with nowt to do while they fix my car so we might see a Friday weekly update

If you see Colston Tower, throw a wave in my direction

[The Professor]

I Was there today!!!

[GGAS]

Small world. That depressing eyesore is where I seem to spend most of my time.

[The Professor]

Shoulda met for a top three coffee

[The Professor]

I feel that at this time of year cricket does not know what it wants. The razzmatazz or the traditional? The superstars or the future stars? The bright colours and the flashing lights or the white, the red and the tranquility. This week it is the IPL stars that win out due to the fact that the County Championship season will (theoretically) start today. It will be an interesting battle in itself to see whether those participating in the four day games in England will get the better of their lower scoring but higher paid compatriots over in India. It is Sunil Narine who has taken to the competition like a duck to a County ground with some electric performances for Kolkata. Narine seems to have something of an affinity with the IPL whereby he manages to imbue himself with batting capabilities that he seems otherwise incapable of in other competitions. This week saw him open the batting for his franchise twice; once he crapped out and the other time he scored a 19 ball half century at a strike rate of 263.15. This highlights the affinity that the West Indian has for this competition. This was his second fifty in the IPL whereas his highest score in the less glitzy PSL stands at a mere 17. For a player who cemented themselves in the top ten with prolific wicket taking for Trinidad and Tobago, it seems unusual to credit him for high impact batting but if he were to perform as he did against Bangalore rather than Chennai he will soon be leapfrogging the non-IPL playing JP Duminy and Nathan Lyon and challenging for a top three place.

There is a naturally distilled pressure cooker-style quality that these short T20 competitions lend to proceedings. The fact that you are never more than a few days away from your next game allows you to build up form or to continue poor spells with the ball or the bat. It also breeds a natural competition between players. During January's BBL competition my eye was continually drawn to the tussle between Rashid Khan and Jofra Archer who were jostling for position at the bottom of the top ten for the whole month - from there their two paths have dramatically diverted with one at the top of the overall rankings and the other second bottom. This time out I can see three top batsmen all wedged together who could be involved in a three way dog fight over the course of the competition. Hyderabad's Kane Williamson (on 1172 points) joins Bangalore's Virat Kohli (1272) and AB De Villiers (1194) in ninth to eleventh positions with exactly 100 points between them. As it stands it is Kohli who has overall dominance over the other two, however he only got 41 this week from his one game - this is slightly less than the per game average of Williamson who averages 46 points across his two games and is dwarfed by de Villiers' who got 94 points in his one game against Kolkata. At the moment it is the two Bangalore team mates who are butting heads at the foot of the top ten but Williamson will soon find himself in the mix.

If rest leads to good performances there are a group of four players that are due to hit the ground running in this tournament. Jos Buttler, Ravi Ashwin and Shakib Al Hasan have all not played a game since the middle of March whilst Ravi Jadeja has not played since the final of the Vijay Hazare Trophy at the end of February. So who of these very well rested four has been using their time effectively? The best performing of these four is Hyderabad's Shakib who got 92 across his two games. Shakib thrives in T20 competitions and loves playing games hot on the heels of one another - something that the IPL more than caters for. The player was riding high in January before his injury and subsequent tumble down the overall table. Potentially his return to fitness will see him crawl back up. Jos Buttler was not too far off Shakib's pace either with a Narine-like double with one poor showing against Hyderabad yielding just 6 runs but then got 29 off 18 balls in the truncated game against Delhi. Buttler's spell away from the game has seen him settle just outside the top ten and he would be eager to put himself along side Kane Williamson and contribute to the batting battle discussed above. Two players whose form is slightly more worrying are the two Indian bowlers. Ravi Ashwin has only played one game in the IPL but yielded just one wicket from it. It is unfair to judge the Punjab captain on one performance but he will be looking to change a run of poor form that dates back to the start of February. It is coming up to two months since Ashwin last got anything more than two wickets in a match, something he will be desperate to redress. Another player who is in a slump is Ravi Jadeja. It seems like 2018 might be a fairly moribund year for the spinner. Despite Saurashtra's journey to the final of the Vijay Hazare Trophy, it was an ignominious ending for Jadeja who was eventually not given a chance with the ball whatsoever. Before his most recent game for Chennai this week, his last wicket in any game for any team was all the way back in Delhi for India against Sri Lanka on the 2nd December last year. He will hope for a little more faith from his coach Stephen Fleming than he was shown by Saurashtra otherwise he will start to fear for his position in the Indian team.

Week

Sunil Narine - 182
Rashid Khan - 100
AB De Villiers- 94
Shakib Al Hasan - 92
Kane Williamson - 92
Jos Buttler - 85
Ravi Jadeja - 43
Virat Kohli - 41
Ravi Ashwin- 30
Quinton de Kock- 14
Jofra Archer - dnp
Hashim Amla - dnp
George Bailey - dnp
JP Duminy - dnp
Dean Elgar- dnp
Aaron Finch- dnp
Simon Harmer - dnp
Nathan Lyon - dnp
Mitchell Marsh - dnp
Shaun Marsh - dnp
Jeetan Patel - dnp
Joe Root - dnp
Steve Smith - dnp
David Warner - dnp

Overall

Rashid Khan - 2178
Simon Harmer - 2011
Nathan Lyon - 1789
JP Duminy - 1671
Sunil Narine- 1632
Joe Root - 1615
Mitchell Marsh - 1425
Jeetan Patel - 1414
Virat Kohli- 1272
AB De Villiers- 1194
Kane Williamson -1172
Jos Buttler - 1111
Aaron Finch - 999
Dean Elgar- 932
Ravi Ashwin - 908
Quinton de Kock - 895
Shakib Al Hasan - 754
David Warner - 752
Hashim Amla - 723
Steve Smith - 706
George Bailey - 631
Shaun Marsh- 565
Jofra Archer - 550
Ravi Jadeja - 455

Summary

A shift in the balance between Test players and T20 stars sees those in the bottom half of the table start to make gains. Those few contributors with two players in the IPL have done well this week before their County cricket partners join them.

Week

Andy - 186
The Professor- 182
Ian - 135
Rich - 115
GG-AS - 100
Adi - 41
RDJ - 14
Arthur - 0
DC - 0
DFM - 0
FTS - 0
RD - 0

Overall

GG-AS - 3793
DFM - 3425
The Professor - 3303
FTS - 2721
Andy - 2366
Red Devil Jr - 2320
Rich - 2019
Adi - 2005
Dr Cricket - 1549
Arthur - 1337
Red Devil - 1317
Ian - 1209