icc rankings

If England win this series 2-1, they and India will have equal points at the top of the rankings.

I cannot see India winning one of the tests but say India do come back to level then they will be worthy of their ranking.

Ginger, I cannot see India levelling the series but 2-1 is possible.

Tob be fair to Bollinger until he had a mare in the Ashes (he was injured) he was Australia's best bowler and our most likely bowler to be included in a World XI.

Errr... Cook fails 4 times on the bounce and goes down the rankings, Trott has mixed sucess and goes down less than Cook.

If you think that proves the rankings are rubbish, may I ask what you expected to happen?

"Errr... Cook fails 4 times on the bounce and goes down the rankings, Trott has mixed sucess and goes down less than Cook..."

Because of the 16 innnings prior for Cook where he scored over a thousand runs. Does that suddenly fail to have any influence over the rankings then? Does someone who has failed a few times suddenly fall dramatically on the space of a few bad shots? You may find that to be satisfactory, I rather think it shows the shortcomings of the table. Besides I said I was bemused as well, are you NEVER suprised at anything then?

Actually that should have read (prior to this series against india) 1056 runs in 11 completed innings - an average of nearly 100.

DrBantam,

But you talk as if while Cook was doing well in those 16 prior innings, Trott was doing poorly.

HE wasn't!

He was doing almost as well as Cook.


The curent form of both has declined, Cook's more sharply than Trott's.

There's already the career averages if you want history to always be taken into account.

The rankings are about who is currently the best player, and unlike the averages they take the difficulty of the opposition into account when assessing the value of a performance.

I think the rankings add something to cricket. If you don't that's fair enough. Maybe just don't bother reading them if you don't believe in them?

I wasn't suggesting though Wideboy that Trott should have dropped down the table with Cook, just that its strange that he DIDN'T drop down with Cook after a few lousy innings.
I think really these tables shouldn't be 'updated' until after a test series is fully over - what if Cook scores a treble hundred against India in the next test, does he suddenly shoot up the rankings again? Yeah maybe you are right maybe i place too much in them and I should stop looking!!

I guess that's the subjective bit about the rankings - the 'decay rate' of a performance... in other words, how much weight do you give to the most recent performance, and how quickly does that weighting drop away.

If I read you correctly, you feel the rankings are too volatile, and would prefer the most recent performances to carry less weight and older ones more?

I can respect that view, though personally I don't thing you can go very far down that path before the rankings would start to tell you the same as the averages - and then something's been lost from the game (even if it is just a debating point - we've got to have something to talk about in the lunch interval).