Just before the start of the county season, we named our dozen players to watch - see Part 1 and Part 2 here. We thought it would be fun to see how the 12 fare over the coming season, so have devised what is probably a flawed points system to help assess their progress.
It's been a momentous week. First, all English cricket fans are basking in the the success of the England team winning the World T20. Secondly, test cricket returns next week with the start of the England-Bangladesh test series. And third, the English summer has finally arrived (even if we only get to enjoy the sun in our home of the South of France instead :-)
To mark this, we have decided to add four players to our original 12 to watch for this season. It probably isn't cricket, but it is our league and we'll admit we erred in including these four before the season.
The first of the four is Andrew Gale, the 26 year old Yorkshire captain, who has made a fine start to the season both with the bat and in the unique challenge that is skippering Yorkshire. He is already being talked of as a future England captain.
Then we have James Hildreth of Somerset, who has promised much over the years without delivering the final surge required to put him in line for England selection. He has also had a good start to the season and scored a remarkable hundred off 68 balls this week to help Somerset beat Yorkshire.
Next up is Chris Woakes, the Warwickshire all-rounder, who represented the Lions this week and could soon challenge Tim Bresnan and Luke Wright for thier places in the England one day and Twenty 20 sides.
Finally, we have 18 year old Durham all-rounder Ben Stokes. We have hung our heads in shames many times this week for our failure to include him in our original dozen. He is perhaps the most talented of the lot and he had us salivating over his potential when he saw on Sky his hundred against Kent this week (see our 1st and 2nd posts of the week on Stokes).
All this, means it's been a bumper week of movement in the table. All 16 played, even Ravi Bopara who took seven wickets for the Lions and Alex Hales, who made his first championship appearance of the season for Notts and proceeded to score 136 against Hampshire.
Of course, the performance of the week even eclipsing Stokes, was Craig Kieswetter's man of the match performance in the World T20 final. It's been quite a week.
| The Reverse Sweep's County Players to watch 2010 - League Table | |||||||||
| Player | County | Played | Points | Points awarded* | |||||
| Gale | Yorkshire | 6 | 69 | County Appearance | 5 | ||||
| Finn | Middlesex | 5 | 64 | Lions Appearance | 10 | ||||
| Hildreth | Somerset | 6 | 61 | Test appearance | 20 | ||||
| Rashid | Yorkshire | 6 | 57 | T20I/ODI appearance | 3 | ||||
| Woakes | Warks | 5 | 56 | Score of 40-49 | 3 | ||||
| Stokes | Durham | 5 | 52 | 50-99 | 5 | ||||
| Kieswetter | Somerset | 9 | 52 | 100-199 | 10 | ||||
| Hamilton-Brown | Surrey | 5 | 46 | 200+ | 20 | ||||
| Northeast | Kent | 6 | 45 | 3 wickets in an innings | 3 | ||||
| Panesar | Sussex | 6 | 45 | 4 wickets | 5 | ||||
| Taylor | Leics | 6 | 44 | 5 or 6 wickets | 10 | ||||
| Wainwright | Yorkshire | 4 | 24 | 7wickets+ | 20 | ||||
| Bopara | Essex | 2 | 21 | Catches | 1 | ||||
| Hales | Notts | 1 | 16 | Stumpings | 3 | ||||
| Tremlett | Surrey | 2 | 15 | ||||||
| Borthwick | Durham | 2 | 12 | ||||||
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