Hampshire all-rounder Liam Dawson has taken the opportunity to climb into second place in the overall Professional Cricketers’ Association Most Valuable Player Rankings.

With Middlesex’s Toby Roland-Jones included in England’s Test squad, which meant he missed the Specsavers County Championship win over Somerset at Taunton, Dawson made the most of his chance to improve his PCA MVP ranking.

Dawson, who made his international T20 debut for England against Sri Lanka recently, made his first championship century of the season in Hampshire’s drawn match against Warwickshire at Edgbaston.

The 26 year-old contributed 21 per cent of Hampshire’s runs in their total of 531, their highest on Warwickshire soil, which gave him 19 PCA MVP points towards a season-best championship match haul of 20 points.

Dawson followed up by making a maiden T20 half century in last night’s NatWest T20 Blast win over Glamorgan and taking four for 23 to seal the victory.

Dawson, who contributed 45 per cent of Hampshire’s runs and scored his own runs at a rate of 141, took 39 rankings points from the match which nudged Roland-Jones out of second place.

Dawson now has 290 PCA MVP points, 16 more than Roland-Jones, and 45 behind leader Joe Leach the Worcestershire all-rounder.

He is also second in the NatWest T20 Blast rankings with 134 points, just 20 behind leader Michael Klinger, the Gloucestershire captain and batsman.

In the Royal London One Day Cup rankings Dawson is in third place with 81 points, four adrift of Nottinghamshire batsman Michael Lumb and eight behind Glamorgan’s Colin Ingram, the early pacesetter.

The PCA MVP was introduced in 2007 and is designed by the players to find the cricketers who really win matches by combining all aspects of a player’s performance to give a ranking in relation to his peers.

The revised MVP formula gives full credit to those players whose performances improve their team’s chances of winning. Points are accrued for all runs scored and wickets taken; these are then adjusted within the context of the match to take into account strike rates and economy rates.

Runs gain more points if they are scored quickly or in low-scoring contests. Top order wickets taken at the start of the innings are judged more valuable than those that fall later, and bowlers who bowl their overs cheaply (in the context of the match) are given due reward for doing so.

The weightings in the revised formula have been scaled so as to provide continuity with previous seasons, ensuring that the value of an MVP point this year is equivalent to those allocated under previous formulae.