Photo Credit: Professional Cricketers’ Association
Critchley, Lamb, Curran and Ecclestone among the top performers so far this season.
Matt Critchley leads the race for £10,000 as the domestic and England Most Valuable Player Rankings have begun to take shape halfway through the 2021 season.
Derbyshire’s Critchley is one of ten different leaders of the MVP Rankings, heading up the Overall MVP with 365.6 MVP points at an average of 18.3 points-per-game across all formats this season. That puts him in pole position to receive the cash reward with £10,000 on offer for the best player in men’s domestic cricket according to the brand-new MVP.
The news comes towards the end of the latest round of LV= Insurance County Championship fixtures, which has seen eight fixtures take place during a break in this year’s Vitality Blast.
Dom Bess, who took a career best 7-43 against Northamptonshire, has been the highest MVP points scorer of the week with 50.7 points, whilst his England colleague James Anderson is set to tally over 43 points after he claimed a career best 7-19, including his 1,000th First-Class wicket.
Nottinghamshire’s Luke Fletcher amazingly claimed his fourth MVP of the Match award in just his eighth County Championship appearance this season as he scored 43 MVP points against Derbyshire. Fletcher has subsequently moved up to fifth in the Overall MVP and third in the format-specific Championship MVP.
Behind Critchley, last year’s Overall MVP Simon Harmer sits in second position with 350 MVP points, Championship MVP leader Craig Overton is third with 322, breakout star Harry Brook is fourth with 307, whilst Fletcher sits fifth with 300.
In the Championship MVP, Overton (245 MVP points), is followed by Harmer (231), Fletcher (227), Darren Stevens (223) and Critchley (217).
With most sides having played 11 fixtures in this season’s Vitality Blast, Notts Outlaws’ Samit Patel leads the Blast MVP with 184 MVP points at an amazing 16.7 points-per-game.
Where Fletcher has dominated for his side on the red-ball stage, Patel has done so in white-ball cricket, earning four MVP of the Match awards in his 11 outings as Notts sit top of the north group with seven wins and 17 points.
Patel is followed by 2020 Blast MVP Will Jacks (164 MVP points), Critchley (149), the competition’s leading run-scorer Brook (143) and Gloucestershire’s Glenn Phillips (138).
With the knockout stages of the Blast on the horizon, the race for the £2,500 cash prize on offer to the Blast MVP is hotting up ahead with Finals Day set to take place on Saturday 18 September.
View the men’s domestic MVP Rankings.
Lamb leads the way in women’s MVP
Thunder’s Emma Lamb leads the way in the first ever women’s domestic Overall MVP, with points counting towards the table from both the 50-over Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy and the 20-over Charlotte Edwards Cup, and a £5,000 cash prize on offer for the winner.
Lamb has scored 119 MVP points in her six appearances across both the competitions this season, including 48 against Northern Diamonds in the Charlotte Edwards Cup, which is the highest total in any women’s domestic fixture this season.
The 23-year-old leads from Southern Vipers’ Charlie Dean (97 MVP points) in second, June PCA Player of the Month Bryony Smith (95) in third, Jenny Gunn (91) in fourth and Eve Jones (89) in fifth.
Lamb also leads the race for £2,500 in the format-specific Charlotte Edwards Cup MVP with 56.5 MVP points, whilst England’s Amy Jones remains the current favourite to also take home £2,500 as the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy MVP – she leads the way in that competition with 68 points.
Both domestic men’s and women’s players will be looking forward to the arrival of The Hundred MVP, with the Rankings set to go live as the new competition begins with Oval Invincibles Women vs Manchester Originals Women on Wednesday 21 July.
View the women’s domestic MVP Rankings.
Chance to impress in England MVP
Following two comprehensive series victories over Sri Lanka, all-rounder Sam Curran leads the England men’s Overall MVP 76.8 MVP points. Curran is also top of the IT20 MVP with 47.3 MVP points, whilst Rory Burns (48.4 points) and Joe Root (37.5) lead the Test and ODI Rankings.
However, all of that could change with the news that England have had to name an entirely new 18-man squad for the upcoming three-match ODI series against Pakistan after a Covid-19 outbreak in the existing squad, with the first fixture taking place in Cardiff on Thursday.
Captained by Ben Stokes, domestic MVP high-flyers in the form of Brydon Carse, Will Jacks and Phil Salt will have the chance to make their mark on the international stage, as they will be aiming to match the likes of Root (37.5 ODI MVP points), Chris Woakes (32.6) and David Willey (31.5) who currently occupy the podium positions in the ODI MVP.
A total of 26 players have already played for England this season and therefore feature in the Overall MVP, and you can click here to view the current standings ahead of ODI and IT20 series against Pakistan.
Ecclestone outstanding for England Women
After three ODIs and a one-off Test Match against India, off-spinner Sophie Ecclestone finds herself at the top of the England Women Overall MVP.
The 2019 NatWest Women’s Player of the Summer has so far earned 72.9 MVP points across both formats, including 37 during her MVP of the Match performance in the aforementioned Test Match at Bristol.
Nat Sciver, who is the current leader of the ODI MVP, is in second place with 62 MVP points, whilst skipper Heather Knight sits third with 54.4 points.
There is all to play for as Knight’s side look forward to a three-match IT20 series against the same opposition beginning on Friday, before England welcome New Zealand to these shores later on in the summer. You can view the England Women MVP Rankings here.
Find out more about the PCA MVP Rankings which were relaunched by the PCA and CricViz ahead of the 2021 domestic season.
Follow @pcaMVP on Twitter to keep up-to-date with all the latest MVP news.
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.
