In a not so good news for the Indian cricket fans, there are no Indian bowlers in the top 10 Test bowlers as per latest ICC rankings.
Off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin is the highest ranked bowler on 12th postion in the ICC rankings with 686 points.
Recently India played a one-off Test against Bangladesh which ended in a draw in Fatullah. Ashwin bowled really well and took five wickets in Bangadesh the first innings.
Interestingly in this Test, India skipper Virat Kohli chose to go with five specialist bowlers. The Indian bowling attack consisted of a mixture of regulars and comebacke players. Likes of Ashwin and pacer Umesh Yadav, who are India relugars now, whereas veteran offie Harbhajan Singh made a successful return to the Indian Test squad after two years.
The other two bowlers were pacers Ishant Sharma and Varun Aaron while Bhuvneshwar Kumar was kept out of the final eleven. While Umesh and Ishant remained wicket less, Aaron claimed the solitary wicket by an Indian fast bowler as the spinning duo dominated the entire Test.
The ‘Turbantor’ scalped three Bangladeshi wickets, including the important ones of in-form Imrul Kayes and run machine Monimul Haque. He along with Ashwin restricted the rival batsmen from scoring runs, sclaped eight out ten wickets amongst themselves as Bangladesh was bundled out for 256 and were forced to follow-on. He also achieved another feat in Tests by overtaking legendary Wasim Akram, thus, becoming the 9th highest wicket taker in Test history.
If rain would not have played spoil sport throughout the entire match and ruined the majority of the play, who knows India might have won the match banking on its bowlers, spinners to be specific!
Here is a list of Indian Test bowlers and their current ICC rankings and points:
|
Bowler |
Current Ranking |
Points |
|
Ravichandran Ashwin |
12 |
686 |
|
Ishant Sharma |
19 |
567 |
|
Zaheer Khan |
24 |
525 |
|
Ravindra Jadeja |
29 |
480 |
|
Mohammed Shami |
32 |
462 |
|
Harbhajan Singh |
33 |
454 |
|
Umesh Yadav |
46 |
367 |
|
Bhuvneshwar Kumar |
50 |
349 |
|
Varun Aaron |
86 |
163 |
*Rankings updated upto 16th June, 2015