Not a lot of international cricket this week, but one individual performance stood out for me. However, I have also ventured to India for an equally remarkable player taking part in a record-breaking match.
Jonathan Trott was in the frame for my weekly prize after his Adelaide hundred. However, his first-ball duck today at Brisbane cancelled that out emphatically! Shahid Afridi had one of his biggest 'boom-boom' moments - 65 in 25 balls - and Mohammad Hafeez scored his first ODI century at a more leisurely rate in Pakistan's victory over New Zealand at Christchurch.
CHRIS WOAKES was undoubtedly one of the young stars of the 2010 domestic season in England, and he deserved to make his international debut earlier this month first in the T20s (when he took Cameron White;s wicket and hit the winning runs) then in the 50-over game at Sydney where he bowled tidily enough. but England's total had been inadequate, not for the last time in the series! Today in Queensland, he claimed the second best analysis by an English bowler in ODIs: 6-45 in 10 overs. And it wasn't just a lucky run-through a slogging lower order either. First he captured the big scalp of Shane Watson, followed by White, Hussey and Clarke, with Hastings and Lee completing the set within three balls. I think he's unklucky not to have been selected for the World Cup but I guess England have stuck with the tried-and-tested formula of bits-and-pieces all-rounders like Yardy, Wright and Collingwood. Well, it worked for the T20 World Cup, right?
Another man missing from his country's World Cup squad is Woakes's fellow 21 year-old, ABHINAV MUKUND. A former Under-19 squad player from Chennai, he has been sensational in domestic cricket in the past few years. In only 39 first-class games he has scored 13 centuries - a fabulous ratio - and accumulated more than 3,000 runs at an average of over 58. That's Tendulkar-esque! This week, he struck two centuries for South Zone in their Duleep Trophy semi-final victory. And what a victory it was. His side defeated Central Zone by a massive 552 runs, the largest ever margin in Indian first-class cricket history!
His last List A game was for India A against the England Lions last summer, scoring a brisk 62, including a number off a certain Mr Woakes. His one-day average is also 58 and he can bowl some handy leg-breaks, too. If it wasn't for India's embarrassment of batting riches, he would surely be in the team, if not for the World Cup then for Tests. If either Gambhir or Sehwag should become injured, Mukund must come into the reckoning. He's an aggressive left-hander who can score quickly or anchor an innings and he should also get a place in the IPL, although he hasn't yet appeared in any of the provisional squads. Definitely one for the future, and in the present he is one of my Players of the Week.
