Kane Williamson, who missed the second test against Windies due to the birth of his son, has fallen behind Virat Kohli to third place in the revised test rankings published by the ICC on Tuesday. Tom Latham’s poor performance, meanwhile, saw Ajinkya Rahane sneak into the Top 10 of the hitters’ rankings.
Indian skipper Virat Kohli got a little boost ahead of the first Test against Australia on Thursday, as Kane Williamson’s absence in Test second against the Windies saw him overtake the Kiwi skipper and regain second place in the batters’ standings from ICC for Testing. Williamson had matched Kohli last week after his flawless 251 at Hamilton, but his absence in the second round has now seen him go 9 points (877) behind his Indian counterpart (886). The duo, however, are still some way behind top-ranked Steve Smith, who sits on top with 911 ranking points.
There was also one more shift in the Top 10 of the hitters ranking as Ajinkya Rahane broke into the Top 10, displacing New Zealand’s Tom Latham. Kiwi’s new backup skipper only posted a mediocre 27 in Test 2 at Wellington, and the disappointing performance saw him break out of the Top 10. Rahane is now two points (726) ahead of Latham (724), with the hitters scheduled to play tests against Australia and Pakistan respectively.
However, there was more misery for the Kiwis as Neil Wagner gave up second place to Stuart Broad. Wagner impressed with the bat in Wellington, scoring 66 unbeaten, but picking just 3 wickets in two innings saw him drop 5 points (840) behind Broad (845). There was more good news for the Indians too, as Jason Holder’s wicketless exit on the New Zealand series saw him break out of the Top 10, which in turn pushed Jasprit Bumrah (8th) and Ravichandran Ashwin (10th) towards up in one place.
On the other hand, Ben Stokes extended his lead at the top of the off-road rankings over Holder. Stokes (446) is now 23 points ahead of Holder, but won’t have a chance to improve his numbers until the India series in February, having rested for England’s two-test series against Sri Lanka.
Previously, New Zealand, while climbing to third place in the World Test Championship Table, also came close to Australia’s number one ranking, only trailing its Trans-Tasman rivals (116,461) by a few decimal points (116,375).
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