Shubman Gill has surpassed Babar Azam to become the new No. 1 ODI batter, while Siraj has reclaimed the top bowling spot.
Gill, Siraj : Shubman Gill has surpassed Babar Azam to take the top spot in the men’s ODI batting rankings. Mohammed Siraj has moved up two spots to take over the top spot among ODI bowlers, displacing Shaheen Shah Afridi. The top of the bowling table, in fact, has a decidedly Indian flavor to it, with Kuldeep Yadav now in the top five, Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami in the top ten, and Virat Kohli, after two unbeaten centuries and four half-centuries at the World Cup, moving up three spots to No. 4 among batters, just one rating point behind Quinton de Kock, the World Cup’s leading run-scorer.
SHUBHMAN GILL, INDIAN CRICKET TEAM PLAYER
Gill has had an outstanding year in one-day international cricket, scoring 1449 runs from 26 matches and hitting four hundreds, including a double-century. His yearly average is a spectacular 63.00, compared to a lifetime average of 61.02. He had a sluggish start to the World Cup after being out at the start due to dengue fever, but he has 219 runs in six innings, including fifties against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Babar had a good World Cup, scoring four half-centuries in eight innings, but the margin between him and the rising Gill was so narrow that he needed to do more to keep the position he had held for more than two
years. From the perspective of India, Gill has become the country’s fourth highest ODI batter in the ICC rankings, behind Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni, and Virat Kohli.
Meanwhile, the biggest individual batting performance of the World Cup so far came on Tuesday night in Mumbai, when Glenn Maxwell put up a superhuman performance to propel Australia over Afghanistan and into the World Cup semi-finals. That undefeated double-century propelled him up two positions
to sixth, while the game’s other centurion, Ibrahim Zadran, has risen six places to 12th after a strong World Cup campaign. Fakhar Zaman, another hitter who has played a significant part in his team’s fortunes, is now ranked 11th among batters, up three positions.
Overall, the rankings reflect India’s domination at the World Cup, as they have won eight of eight league-stage matches by large scores. Kohli (No. 2 behind de Kock) and Rohit Sharma (No. 5) have been their most productive hitters thus far, but it has been their bowling that has actually blown the competition away. None of them are among the top three wicket-takers, but Shami (16 wickets in four games), Bumrah (15 in eight), Ravindra Jadeja (14 in eight), Kuldeep (12 in eight), and Siraj (ten in eight) have performed admirably as a unit, and India has bowled out England for 129, Sri Lanka for 55, and South Africa for 83 in their last three games. Siraj has moved up to first place after taking 3 for 16 and
1 for 11 against Sri Lanka and South Africa earlier in the week. Afridi, who was No. 1 the previous week, has dropped to fifth, with spinners Keshav Maharaj and Adam Zampa, the World Cup’s second-highest wicket-taker, moving up to No. 2 and No. 3, respectively.
Kuldeep is up three ranks to fourth, Bumrah is up three spaces to eighth, while Shami is up seven spots to tenth for the Indians.