While the vagaries of April's global weather has brought unbroken sunshine to England and rain to India, there have been plenty of interesting results and individual performances.
Last week's candidates for Player of the Week were mostly in the mix again. Lasith Malinga may be playing games with the Sri Lanka Cricket Board but he lets his bowling arm do the talking for Mumbai in the IPL, especially with his 3-9 in 4 overs against the Deccan Chargers. In England, Chris Woakes claimed 6-49 in the Championship and his Warwickshire colleague, Varun Chopra thumped his second double-century in successive matches, plus a 54 in the CB40. He is now looking quite a useful one-day player and, judging by his run-accumulation, pretty useful in the four-day game, too.
Other star turns in domestic cricket included Craig Kieswetter's 100 in Somerset's welcome CB40 win over Notts, fellow 'keeper Niall O'Brien's rapid 90-somethings for Northants and his skipper Andrew Hall's 5-22 in the one-day defeat of Leicestershire. Zander de Bruyn's 172 for Surrey against Glamorgan showed Somerset what they have been missing so far, and Essex opener Alistair Cook's 155 reminded us all what he could do for England at Test level this summer. Farveez Maharoof may not be the most successful of Sri Lankan players, but in Lancashire colours he enjoyed an excellent all-round week. Yorkshire's Ryan Sidebottom and Richard Pyrah each grabbed eight wickets in the match against Notts which, thanks to a second innings batting collapse, could not prevent the champions nicking an unexpected 58-run victory.
However, my County Player of the Week is Gareth Berg of Middlesex. he's one of those useful all-rounders who scores few hundreds and takes few 'five-fors' but nevertheless contributes a great deal to the team. Aged 30, his first-class career has just entered only a fourth season but this week, he combined a match-winning 80 with aggregate bowling figures of 6-80 against Derbyshire. This was followed by a miserly 4-24 in the CB40 victory over Worcestershire. Berg is yet another South Africa-born player but is usefully available to England should an ODI all-rounder berth become vacant.
Over in the IPL, in addition to Malinga, Harbajhan Singh's 5-18 for Mumbai against Chennai caught the eye, and his team-mate Rohit Sharma plundered 87 in 48 balls and 56 in 34 in his two games this week. Chris Gayle' love of T20 at the expense of everything else showed its face when his arrival in the competition for Bangalore was trumpeted by a powerful unbeaten 102 against KKR. Nevertheless, over the week, the West Indian was narrowly eclipsed by Aussie Shaun Marsh, my other Player of the Week.
The Aussie has become something of a T20 specialist, his first-class talents earning him a place in the Test squad but as yet no slot in the first XI. 33 ODIs have yielded more than 1100 runs at 37 but in the shorter format, his average is an impressive 45 at a strike rate of almost 138. This week, the Kings XI Punjab batsman struck 71 against the Royals and a punishing 95 in 46 balls versus Delhi, the latter in a very high-scoring match in which Sehwag and Warner put on 146 in 70 balls, which even Marsh's efforts couldn't match. I still think he will one day emulate his father Geoff and make his Test debut but for now the world should enjoy his batting talents in T20.
