Is ICC’s number 1 Test team India, really the world’s best?
The International Cricket Council (ICC) rankings system is sponsored by a tyre company which happens to have the highest stock price at the Bombay Stock Exchange. The top-ranked Test team wins a silver and gold-plated mace, which is currently all over the Instagram accounts of Team India players.
So much for the primacy of ICC Test rankings and the mace whose latest occupants are India. But the jury is still out on whether India really is the best Test team in the world.
In the last year-and-a-half, they have scored a series win in Sri Lanka and West Indies, in addition to defeating South Africa and New Zealand at home. That’s what it has taken for Virat Kohli’s Team India to win the Test mace.
India fares a lot better overseas these day, but one’s money would still not be on a touring Indian party in South Africa, Australia, England or New Zealand.
We are yet to know if the top bowler in ICC rankings, R Ashwin, can perform the same. We also still don’t know if captain Kohli has exorcised the demons of England 2014. Both are top performers and they may well deliver, but we are yet to see it happen.
India displaced Pakistan at the top of the Test rankings, which had risen to the top on the strength of a squared series result in England, and wins in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and against Australia at their adopted home, UAE.
Pakistan would acknowledge its 2-2 series result against England was a lot more satisfying than any of the wins in the subcontinent.
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| India displaced Pakistan at the top of the Test rankings. (Photo credit: Twitter/ICC) |
India may have won the mace but none of the players got an opportunity to compete in a series that would allow them to experience their coming of age moment.
If India manages to deliver another couple of impressive performances, it will stay on top. With two more home Test series to follow, they would fancy their chances.
The number one ranked team every April is declared the world’s best.
Even as the ICC members are currently locked inside boardrooms talking about giving context to Test cricket, ICC CEO Dave Richardson has stuck to his brief in defence of the system in place.
"With other sides in touching distance of the top, the MRF ICC Test rankings continue to provide great context for the traditional format of the game. I wish India the very best in their efforts to stay at number one," he said in a release.
Richardson, who was a gritty wicket-keeper for South Africa, would know what a series win in India meant to his side, and what it would mean for the young Indian Test team if they beat the Proteas in their territory.
With the current rankings system, a powerful board that can frame the FTP (Future Tours Programme) to suit their team can bridge the gap between top and bottom-level rankings. The Board of Control for Cricket in India now reserves the year-end festive space for cricket at home and it works well for the team in the rankings analysis.
With the financial model in cricket heavily lopsided, ICC has been forced to allow FTP to be left to bilateral agreements, and boardroom battles for restructuring money distribution will not end in a hurry.
But where the ICC can step in is to either convince Test teams to play a world championship or scrap the rankings charade. The rankings do account for more weightage to overseas wins but struggle hopelessly when it comes to addressing their over-reliance on scheduling.
Clearly, the ODI and the T20 champions seem more deserving because they win a gruelling World Cup featuring competition against the best and the worst.
The mace-winning team pockets home a million dollars every April but is the win worth its name? Should it not, when we are evaluating Test cricket?
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