PCA PRESS RELEASE
Jeetan Patel, last year’s winner of the Professional Cricketers’ Association Most Valuable Player Award, has made a late bid to defend his title.
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The New Zealand off-spinner produced a spectacular all-round performance in the Specsavers County Championship match against Yorkshire at Headingley where he made a century in the first innings and took six wickets in Yorkshire’s second innings.
Despite Patel’s heroics, Warwickshire were still beaten by two wickets but his outstanding individual effort took Patel to third place in the list of all-time best individual performances in the County Championship since the PCA
MVP Rankings system was introduced in 2007.
Patel earned 30 points for his century, the third of his career and second against Yorkshire, added 11 more points for taking two wickets in Yorkshire’s first innings and 34 more for his first five wicket haul of the season.
He ended the match with 80.46 rankings points, a total that has only been beaten by Middlesex off-spinner Ollie Rayner (80.81 points) against Surrey in 2013 and Kent batsman Martin van Jaarsveld who amassed 81.59 points against Surrey in 2008 when he scored a century in each innings and took five wickets.
Patel’s haul at Headingley has taken him to second place in this season’s overall PCA MVP on 458 points in all competitions, 65 points behind Nottinghamshire all-rounder Samit Patel, the long-time leader.
With only one round of County Championship matches to play, Samit Patel remains favourite to win this year’s PCA MVP Award and a £10,000 prize, but his last five County Championship matches have yielded just 43 rankings points, 11 of them in the defeat by Northamptonshire at Wantage Road.
Somerset pace bowler Craig Overton is third in the rankings on 455 points with Hampshire’s former South Africa fast bowler Kyle Abbott fourth on 453 points and Surrey’s former Sri Lanka batsman Kumar Sangakkara fifth on 451 points.
Sangakkara, who will retire at the end of the English season, said farewell to the Kia Oval in style by making his eighth County Championship century of the season – 157 in the first innings against Somerset – and a match haul of 39 rankings points.
The PCA MVP Rankings system identifies the match-winners and key influencers of matches throughout the domestic season.
The formula takes into account conditions, quality of opposition, captaincy and strike-rates as well as runs scored and wickets taken.
In the County Championship PCA MVP, Essex seamer Jamie Porter has gone three points clear at the top of the table after another productive week.
Porter took six wickets in the match to help the newly-crowned champions complete a remarkable victory over Hampshire at the Ageas Bowl after they had followed on.
A match haul 25 PCA MVP points took Porter ahead of Abbott in the Championship rankings with Kent all-rounder Darren Stevens, the previous leader, frustrated by a complete washout against Derbyshire at Chesterfield.
Porter’s county team-mate Simon Harmer, the former South Africa off-spinner, is fourth with 313 points in the Championship with Sangakkara fifth on 295 points.
Surrey all-rounder Rikki Clarke reached the 4,000 career points landmark against Somerset where he took a career-best seven for 55 in the first innings, two more wickets in the second and weighed in with a valuable half century.
Clarke is only the sixth member of an exclusive club who have earned 4,000 PCA MVP points after Samit Patel (5,276), Stevens (5,053), Peter Trego (4,703), Jim Allenby (4,135) and Marcus Trescothick (4,070).
Sussex batsman Chris Nash needs 125 more points to join the 4,000 club with Essex batsman Varun Chopra and Michael Carberry, who has joined Leicestershire from Hampshire, needing seven and 17 points respectively to reach the 3,000 points milestone.
