Stevens holds slender MVP lead

Darren Stevens remains top of the FTI MVP rankings but is clinging on by his fingernails after a week which saw him take just six points from Kent’s drawn LV= County Championship match against Hampshire at the Ageas Bowl.

Stevens took one wicket, one catch and scored four runs and bowled only two overs in Hampshire’s second innings suggesting he could be running out of steam with the finish line, and the £10,000 prize, within touching distance.

Stevens has had a tremendous season, taking 50 championship wickets for the first time and moving second in the all-time MVP points-scorers list (inception 2007) behind Samit Patel.

He won the NatWest T20 Blast FTI MVP for the second time with 351 runs and 18 wickets and has scored 1,272 runs and taken 78 wickets across all forms. His one remaining game is against Gloucestershire at the Spitfire Ground.

Jeetan Patel is just 24 points behind Stevens with the Royal London One-Day Cup final still to play at Lord’s as well as Warwickshire’s final championship match of the season at home to Durham.

Patel, who is ranked 13th in the One-Day Cup FTI MVP, averages 10.67 points per game in the 50-over competition and 21.86 points per game in the championship.

Even an average performance from the off-spinner across these two matches would leave Stevens needing some sort of performance in his last match.

If Jack Shantry was last week’s standout performer with 10 wickets and a maiden century for Worcestershire against Surrey, this week saw Chris Rushworth eclipse Shantry’s individual points total by taking 15 wickets in 20 overs as Durham annihilated Northants at the the Emirates Durham ICG.

Rushworth took 9-52 and 6-43, earning 70.71 points, the ninth-highest score for an individual match in the history of the rankings.

Martin van Jaarsveld’s 80-point match against Surrey in 2008 remains the performance to beat – the Kent man scoring 114 and 115 either side of taking 5-33. Rushworth has now taken 78 wickets across all forms moving joint fourth in this season’s leading wicket-takers list.

The leading run-scorers, wicket-takers, wicketkeepers and under-23s are listed below the overall table:

OVERALL COUNTY FTI MVP

LEADING RUNSCORERS 2014

LEADING WICKET-TAKERS 2014

LEADING KEEPERS 2014: Dismissals (catches, stumpings)

LEADING ALL-ROUNDERS 2014: Runs/Wks (rankings’ position in each comp)

LEADING YOUNG PLAYERS (Runs/Wks) - U23  as at 1 April 2014