Qualification Quest - WC 2019 and ICC ODI Rankings

In 11 editions of ICC Cricket World Cup, only 5 teams have managed to win that prestigious ICC event. World Cup 2019 will be the first time in the history where two full members of ICC will be forced to take part in a qualifying tournament. The possibility of one of the 5 former Champions ending up being one of those two full members has added a never-before thrill and curiosity in the Cricket world.

Published by Scoreline on April 19, 2017. Click here to continue reading on Scoreline Portal

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How ICC Rankings Annual Update Works

ICC operates a ranking system to rank men’s teams playing across Test, One-Day International and Twenty20 International formats and women’s teams playing One-Day International and Twenty20 International cricket.

ICC publishes up to date current ranking of teams according to that system on its official portal - ICC Team Rankings

ICC Rankings changes overnight once every year when ICC updates Ranking Points of each team to keep the Rankings current and accurate. The update takes place on 1^st May every year when the ICC ODI Rankings are adjusted according to these predefined rules:

• Any points earned earlier than the last 36 months (since 1 May of 3 years ago) are discarded
• Weightage of all points earned between the last 13 to 36 months (between the May of 3 years ago to April of previous year) is set to 50%
• All points earned during the last 12 months (from May of previous year to April of current year) continue to carry the weightage of 100%

Till 30 April of the next year, the above rules remain in effect. Till the next annual update, points earned by matches played during this period are simply added into the annually updated rankings as on 1^st May to give the current ICC Rankings. That means, on every 30 April of a year:

• Points earned during the previous 24 months (since the May of two years ago) are counted with 100% weightage.
• Points earned in between the previous 25^th and 48^th months (since the April of 2 years ago to May of 4 years ago) are counted with 50% weightage.

The idea of ICC ODI Rankings was to build a mechanism to quantify the success of different teams, benchmark their performance and identify the top, the average and the below par teams at certain point in time. The mechanism works on a combination of performance in a match and the current form of the competing teams.

The official ICC website describes the Rankings in these words: 

A team that, over the period being rated, wins as often as it loses while playing an average mix of strong and weak opponents will have a rating of close to 100. A rating of 100 could also correspond to a side that wins more often than it loses but who has generally played more matches against weak teams. Similarly, if the majority of its matches are against strong teams, then a rating of 100 could be achieved despite having more defeats than victories.

It is quite often the case that there are a number of teams in the 90-110 range. These teams are of broadly similar standard. A rating above 120 suggests consistently strong performances. Above 130 is rarely achieved and suggests a high degree of dominance over all other teams.
Source: icc-cricket.com

For the purposes of quick referencing, ranking of 100 can be considered as par, 120 as excellent and 130 above as exceptional. This piece of information helps a lot in seeing a team’s ranking in the context of its own ranking points instead of judging its performance only on the basis of where it stands in the list of twelve ODI Ranked teams at any point.

Theoretically, a team can come out as the number one ranked team in the world with 110 ranking points as well but in the context of strength of performance, that number one ranked team may fall way behind a number one ranked team with 130 ranking points or even a number two or number three team with 120 points.

The other aspect of ICC ODI Rankings is the recent form of the teams. The idea there is to gage the consistency in performance of a team over a period of time and reduce the impact of occasional spike in the performance of any team. The rankings are designed to judge the teams during a reasonable period rather than on the basis of few good or bad series or matches. For that reason, ICC ODI Rankings includes the performances of last 3 to 4 years as detailed earlier.

On that note, it is also worth having a look at how different teams have performed during recent ICC ODI seasons as it also gives a fair idea of why and how some teams will benefit from the annual update and some teams will lose some points (and ranking position). Having a look at the points earned during specific seasons also indicates the trend of improvement or decline in the recent performance of teams. It clearly answers why certain teams enjoy a high ranking position even after performing badly in recent times whereas some teams are struggling in the lower half of the table even after performing better. 

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Consolidated Rankings

as of January 24th

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Net rankings of Cricketing nations

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The Significance of Number 1 Ranking for Pakistan

With rain preventing any significant play at Port of Spain, Pakistan has become the number 1 ranked Test side in the world. Although, the tag of “the best in the world” needs no additives to make it sweeter but in case of Pakistan, the rarity of this occurrence is what magnifies the significance of this feat for the Pakistan Cricket and its fans. 

It is the first time for Pakistan to stand as officially the best Test side in the world since the introduction of ICC official ranking in 2003. During this period of just over 13 years, only four teams have claimed the custody of that MACE and not surprisingly, Australians held it (83 months) longer than everyone else combined (76 months).

But Test Cricket has been around since much earlier than 2003, in fact, till mid 70s – before the start of ODI World Cups – Test Cricket was the only format of Cricket to gauge the brilliance of Cricketing nations. Naturally, other teams also feared better than the rest during that pre-2003 era and it may look harsh not to acknowledge the teams who performed the best in that era, especially the West Indies of late 70s and 80s. Additionally, it also helps in benchmarking the performance of leading sides of last two decades with that of teams of previous decades and century.

To address the same thought, ICC did apply its current rating system, some years ago, to results since 1952 providing ratings for the end of each month back to 1952. 1952 was chosen as the starting point as prior to this date, the number of competing Test teams was small and the frequency of matches was quite low as well. The information used to be available on ICC official website till few years ago but it is not available there any more. Fortunately, found that table in one of the archives that looks like this:

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_Test_Championship#Historical_rankings

This retrospective listing shows that although Pakistan has claimed the MACE for the first time in its history but, had the ICC Test Rankings were in place since Pakistan started playing Test Cricket, it would not have been the first time. Pakistan would have claimed it earlier as well, though only for a brief period of 2 months – from August 1988 to September 1988.

Both of these listings also provide a good opportunity to measure the share of dominance of different teams in the last 64 years (since 1952). In case all the months (in which a team remained number 1 in Tests) are added together, it gives a good measure of the period of dominance of specific teams.

This concluding picture highlights the significance of ‘Number 1 Test Team’ tag for Pakistan. For Australia, losing the MACE may not be as significant as it is for Pakistan to get hold of it. After remaining acknowledged as one of the most competitive sides in the Test Cricket Arena since admission to it, the title of ‘The Best Test team in the world’ has eluded Pakistan for a long time. Admiring and seeing the talent and excellence of their players getting admired by others as well, Pakistani fans have longed for it for too long. So long, that it has almost become a life long wish for quite a few fans.

Finally, the wait is over and Pakistan is crowned the new holder of the throne. That MACE is Pakistan’s to hold, at least for some time and celebrations have just begun. To make it all even more prestigious, who better to receive that MACE than Misbah ul Haq – the rightful custodian of the MACE – without whose custody of the Team Pakistan, it would have self-destructed itself yet another time before achieving this feat. Well done Misbah, Well done Team Pakistan. 

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