Photo Credit: Professional Cricketers’ Association
Durham man leads brand-new Rankings for 2021 season.
Durham man David Bedingham is the early leader of the PCA County Championship Most Valuable Player Rankings, with the MVP having been revamped ahead of this season in its biggest overhaul since 2007.
The South African batsman enjoyed a dream start to the 2021 domestic campaign, collecting 56.4 MVP points on the back of his 237 match runs against Nottinghamshire.
Bedingham’s unbeaten 180 accounted for 54% of his side’s second innings total of 332/4d at Trent Bridge, and his two catches in the match also helped to boost his MVP score.
The early contender for the MVP in the LV= Insurance County Championship leads from Hampshire duo Liam Dawson and James Vince in second and third position respectively.
The international pair’s partnership of 204 helped to sweep Leicestershire aside at Grace Road, with Dawson’s further efforts with the ball and in the field earning him 48.2 MVP points – just 0.5 more than skipper Vince who fell just short of his career best first-class score with 231.
Vince was almost matched in terms of his first innings score and MVP points total by Essex’s Tom Westley. The captain of the defending champions led from the front in compiling 213 in Chelmsford, translating to 47.6 MVP points and fourth position in the Championship MVP after week one.
Middlesex’s Sam Robson completes the first MVP top five of the 2021 season after earning 45.4 points in an ultimately losing cause at Lord’s. The opener could be proud of his individual efforts, however, in making 165 during an innings when no other batsman passed 26, Robson accounting for a huge 54% of his team’s innings total.
Partnering with cricket’s leading analytics specialists CricViz, the PCA has conducted surveys, focus groups and engaged in one-to-one conversations with current players to produce the brand-new MVP formula.
The new algorithm takes into account expected performance on every ball according to CricViz’s extensive database, and also considers the historic performances of the venue each fixture is being played at, therefore giving a more accurate reflection of the top performers in the game than traditional batting and bowling averages do.
The MVP will track the top performers in every single professional fixture during the upcoming season and beyond, with an MVP of the Match awarded for every game and competition, and cross-format Overall MVPs named come the end of the season.
Those individuals who are recognised at the end of the domestic calendar will be rewarded for their efforts, with over twice the prize money on offer for this year’s domestic men’s MVPs compared to any single previous season.
- Overall domestic men’s MVP: £10,000
- Runner-up in Overall MVP: £2,500
- County Championship MVP: £2,500
- Vitality Blast MVP: £2,500
- One-Day Cup MVP: £2,500
- The Hundred MVP: TBC
New for 2021, players, supporters and media alike will also be able to immerse themselves in the MVP Rankings via the new look MVP area of the PCA website.
Tables can be viewed by team or discipline, and you will also be able to view the MVP of the Match for every professional fixture, giving fans, media and players alike unprecedented access to MVP statistics and information.
On a weekend when 20 hundreds were scored across the nine County Championship fixtures despite widespread snowfall, further MVP headlines included Chris Dent and Graeme van Buuren’s stunning efforts against Surrey at Bristol.
The pair put on 193 at more than a run a ball during Gloucestershire’s successful chase of 229, Dent edging ahead of his teammate in the MVP with 38.4 MVP points to van Buuren’s 32.7.
Elsewhere, Tom Haines made an excellent career best 155 – over half of his team’s total of 301 – as Sussex drew with Lancashire at Old Trafford, Haines earning 44 MVP points to move sixth in the MVP.
Adam Lyth scored his 11,000th first-class run in making 52 and 115 not out against Glamorgan at Headingley – the Yorkshire opener was comfortably the MVP of the Match with 43.8 points and currently sits eighth in the table.
Whilst Bedingham currently has more batting MVP points than any other player, Warwickshire PCA rep Oliver Hannon-Dalby leads the bowling charts with 38.1 points in that discipline having claimed match figures of 7-121 against Derbyshire at Edgbaston – enough to earn him the MVP of the Match award for that fixture and move tenth in the table.
Whilst week one of this year’s County Championship was more friendly to the batsmen than the bowlers, the MVP table is shaping up nicely early on in the season, with players from nine different counties represented in the current top 10 ahead of round two which commences on Thursday next week.
For more information on the brand-new MVP Rankings, contact the PCA’s Head of Communications Luke Reynolds at luke.reynolds@thepca.co.uk or the PCA’s Communications Executive Peter Clark at peter.clark@thepca.co.uk.
View the brand-new MVP Rankings and keep up-to-date with the latest MVP news by following @pcaMVP on Twitter.
Name of Author: Professional Cricketers Association
The Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA), founded in 1967 by former England fast bowler Fred Rumsey as the Cricketers’ Association, represents past and present first-class cricketers in England and Wales. In the 1970s, the PCA established a standard employment contract and minimum wage for professional cricketers. It also helped create a pension scheme in 1995 and launched the magazine All Out Cricket and the ACE UK Educational Programme in 2002.
