ICC Rankings – Can They Be Taken Seriously?

Roshan
Abeysinghe

How accurate are ICC team rankings in Cricket? Or are these merely to drum up interest and create the hype? My purpose of asking these questions is not to disapprove of it. I do know that as the game evolves players, administrators and fans look for opportunities to enjoy the game outside the events which happens in the middle.

I am sure having such indexes and information is useful and goo. However, I am honestly not sure considering the recent results in cricket how accurate these rankings could be. Otherwise how could you possibly explain England’s humiliation at the hands of Pakistan and India being trounced comprehensively by Australia? True, India is the World Limited over Champions and the contest was in Tests. But isn’t India a top ranked test team too? Can the disparity between Australia a virtual inexperienced bowling side and India a highly experienced side be so wide? Also let us not forget that India were thrashed by England in England not so long ago. Then England the top team in the world in test Cricket having beaten Australia both at home and away blew away Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India in their own den. But come the tour of UAE where England is playing Pakistan, the English have been reduced to cricket’s paupers with their dismal batting against the Spinners. How can one explain England’s last defeat being bowled out for seventy two after being set a moderate target? Surely Bangladesh  would have been embarrassed by such a batting feat! In the first test too England surrendered and I won’t be surprised if the top test ranked team loses the series and its status come the third test.
What comes out of these results and performance is one very strong factor and that is there are no Champion teams around playing cricket at present. I wonder  whether there has been one for a while since Steve Waugh’s Australians! Even they didn’t conquer the Indian frontier struggling to cope with the spin of Harbhajan and Kumble.
However, I will not hesitate to name the team under Waugh as a champion team. If there was another team of that quality in the last fifty years it was the team led by Clive Lloyd. The West Indies in the late seventies and the decade of the eighties were the unofficial world champions having beaten every team in every country both home and away.
The only exception was the series in New Zealand when the West Indies lost to the Kiwis one nil, though it was obvious that there were many controversial umpiring decisions marring the series. It was the era of home umpires and in that series that the world was aghast when the West Indian fast bowler Colin Croft ran into umpire Fred Goodall and shouldered him intentionally. Then the genial Michael Holding kicked the stumps down when a clear caught behind was given not out. The West Indies also refused to take the field once after tea as a mark of protest at the poor Kiwi umpiring.
Other than the said blot the West Indian records was clean and outstanding and were true Champions of the cricket world. There were no ranking then and it was up to the average fan to debate the case of teams to determine the top teams of world cricket. And I can assure you that they were not far off the mark.
Quite in contrast in the modern era cricket has all what the game needs to create the interest amongst its billions of fans which includes bench marks for players and teams though sadly it doesn’t appear to be realistic practically. Isn’t it clear with these one sided series currently taking place? In the player ranking too I believe there is one clear instance though many other inaccurate results are available. As for the clear case it is the standing of Saqib over Kallis in the allrounders category. Whilst one has no doubt with regards to the highly talented Bangladeshi all rounder Saqib, the entire cricket world knows that Kallis is easily the best all rounder in the world today. His personal stats will confirm it. Besides the impact he creates with bat and ball bears testimony to the said fact. Does it mean then that its only statistics that determine the standings and not the impact a player brings to the game? In Stats alone the greatest ever all rounder the world has seen Sir Garfield Sobers never had an outstanding record as a bowler. But players of his era still speak of his bowling. If stats were an indication where would have Sobers stood in the list? My guess is if the current method is applied he may end up somewhere in the middle and not at the top!
As for England’s performance in the current series it is apparent that their old weakness of failing against quality spinners in the sub continent has began to haunt them. Their defeat in the six out of the seven series played in the Asian region since the year 2000 indicates that they are tigers only in their own back yard. I believe that almost every top team appear to perform and win in their own conditions. But bring them out to a foreign land which has foreign conditions they are bound to struggle. England, South Africa and Australia are and will be at their best both at home and when playing each other in their opponent’s country. The reason has a simple explanation and that is due to the conditions being similar to what they experience. But if any of the said teams played in the Asian circuit against a top team they are bound to struggle big time. This tells us a simple story and that is the world has good cricket teams which could compete and win without having the Champion look about them.
Hence the rankings carried out by the ICC whilst giving the cricketing public plenty of exciting reading material and also interest has nothing else really to offer. I am in no way trying to pick holes in it but simply illustrating the fact that no team is actually better than the other despite the rank they enjoy. There will always be a marked difference when the top teams play teams such as Bangladesh, West Indies and Zimbabwe and possibly New Zealand. But other than the obvious disparity in the quality, there is very little one can pick amongst the best teams today. England’s performance in UAE and Australia beating India or for that matter India’s ODI loss to England in England clearly confirms it.