England’s spinner, Adil Rashid, has been rewarded for his excellent bowling spells in the second and third T20Is of the five-match series in Chennai and Rajkot, as he led their side to victory during the third encounter. He reclaims the number one ICC ranking for the first time since Christmas, when West Indies’ left-arm spinner, Akeal Hossein, overtook him.
Rashid went for just 14 runs in four overs, celebrating one wicket as they narrowly missed the victory in Chennai, but he extended the same touch with 1/15 in four overs to gain a 26-run win. The series now stands at the margin of 2-1. There is so much improvement in the ICC T20I rankings for India’s Varun Chakravarthy.
The Tamil Nadu spinner is the leading wicket-taker of the series so far with the help of 10 wickets in three innings at an average of 8.50, thanks to one five-wicket haul. He climbed up 25 places to fifth following his five-wicket haul in Rajkot, while England’s pacer, Jofra Archer, has jumped up 13 spots to sixth overall after his two wickets in the same Rajkot encounter.
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India’s left-arm spinner, Axar Patel, has been outside the top 10 after going down five spots to 11th on the same list. The left-handed batter for Australia, Travis Head, has a new challenge at the top of the ICC T20I rankings, as the young southpaw Tilak Verma has jumped to the second spot.
Tilak Verma challenges Travis Head among ICC T20I batters
The Hyderabad-born batter is the third leading run-getter of the series with 109 runs in three innings, including his unbeaten knock of 72 runs in 55 balls with the help of four boundaries and five over boundaries at the strike rate of 130.91. Head still holds the 23-point lead at the top of the rankings, but Australia’s next T20I is after a long time.
The Mumbai Indians’ batter could overtake Head with a couple of good scores in the last two T20Is in Pune and Mumbai during the series against England, as Head is currently busy during the first of the two-match Test series in Galle against Sri Lanka. Verma could become the youngest-ever player to top the rankings, as the current record is held by Babar Azam, who became the No.1-ranked T20I batter at the age of just 23 years and 105 days.
Verma’s 832 points in the ICC rankings are the fourth-best by an Indian batter in the rankings, bettered only by Suryakumar Yadav, Virat Kohli, and KL Rahul in the past. India’s opening batter, Abhishek Sharma, has also made huge gains in the list of T20I batters, from 59 to 40, while Liam Livingstone has gone up five places alongside Ben Duckett’s 28 ranks.
There has been a little change in the ICC Test rankings after the second Test between West Indies and Pakistan in Multan, as the visitors finished with a 1-1 series drawn. The left-arm spinner, Noman Ali, has jumped four places up to the fifth position overall on the list of bowlers with the 10-wicket hauls, including the hat-trick.
The left-arm spinner of West Indies, Jomel Warrican, has gained 16 spots to climb to 25th following his ‘Player of the Series’ performance where he cracked 19 wickets in four innings. Noman became just the 12th bowler of Pakistan to go past the 800-point mark in the Test bowling rankings.
India’s Jasprit Bumrah remains at the top of the ICC Test rankings after his superb bowling of 32 wickets against Australia down under in the recent Border Gavaskar Trophy. In the batting department, Mohammad Rizwan has gone up two places to 15th among the Test batters.