Photo Credit: Professional Cricketers’ Association
England MVP Rankings reset ahead of packed international summer schedule.
The PCA Test Most Valuable Player Rankings will be reset on Wednesday ahead of England’s first Test of the summer against New Zealand at Lord’s.
The MVP algorithm, which was refreshed and relaunched ahead of the 2021 domestic season, will be keeping track of England’s top performers during a summer which will see visits from New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India.
It all begins with a Test Match against a New Zealand side ranked second in the world by the ICC Men’s Test Team Rankings, with Kane Williamson’s side preparing for the ICC World Test Championship Final which begins at the Ageas Bowl on 18 June.
It will be the first time the Test MVP has been used since England’s four-match series in India which took place throughout February and March, and the preceding two-match Test series in Sri Lanka in January.
Following those series, skipper Joe Root was named the runaway Test MVP for winter 2020-21 after scoring 163.3 MVP points on the back of a sensational batting sequence which saw him make three scores of over 150 in succession, including two double hundreds.
Below Root, spinners Jack Leach (127.7 MVP points) and Dom Bess (85.3) occupied the podium positions, whilst James Anderson (65.1) and Ben Stokes (52.1) completed the top five.
Wednesday will also see the cross-format Overall MVP reset for the first time since England’s tour of India, which also included three ODIs and five IT20s on top of the four Test Matches.
Root is also the reigning England Overall MVP, whilst Stokes, Leach, Jos Buttler and Jonny Bairstow all finished in the top five last time around.
With the likes of Stokes, Buttler, Bairstow and Jofra Archer all rested for the upcoming New Zealand series due to their involvement in the Indian Premier League, the opportunity presents itself for some new faces to make a name for themselves at the top of both the Overall and Test MVPs early on in the summer.
Wicketkeeper-batter James Bracey could be in line to make his international debut – the Gloucestershire man has enjoyed an excellent start to the domestic season, passing fifty on five occasions including one century. Bracey is currently the 17th ranked batter in the LV= Insurance County Championship MVP.
Bracey could be joined by the returning Haseeb Hameed, who is back in the squad almost four-and-a-half years since becoming the youngest debutant to open the batting for England in Rajkot in November 2016.
Like Bracey, Hameed has been in excellent form for his county Nottinghamshire during the early part of the domestic season, and is the 13th ranked batter in the Championship MVP with 97.5 batting MVP points.
In the bowling stakes, Ollie Robinson could be in line to make his long-awaited international debut. Robinson is the 10th ranked bowler in the Championship MVP with 128.9 MVP points in that discipline. The Sussex man has been amongst the wickets every time he has bowled so far this season, including an incredible career best 9-78 against Glamorgan in mid-April.
The MVP was designed by the PCA in conjunction with the players to identify the top performers in the game. Relaunched in 2021 with assistance from cricket’s leading analytics experts CricViz, the algorithm takes into account key match-defining contributions on top of traditional batting and bowling averages to give the most accurate picture of the best performers in the game.
An MVP will be named for each international format, men’s and women’s, throughout the summer schedule, as well as a cross-format Overall MVP come the end of England’s campaign.
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 England MVP Rankings for winter 2020-21 and keep up-to-date with the latest MVP news by following @pcaMVP on Twitter.
