Rising, falling, slipping, sliding
The ICC have updated their team test rankings, and as I expected New Zealand has gone up a rank from 8 to 7 thanks to the Windies losing against Bangladesh and that being thanks to a contract dispute stripping the Windies of their front line players.
(I was going to make this post yesterday based on the July ranking, which according to the 2009 archives actually showed that New Zealand’s rating had fallen from 82 points in May (don’t know what happened to June) to 78, despite not having played test cricket for months. The ICC updates their table every year at about this time, dropping off old results, which would explain this change. It’s good I waited for a day and managed to catch the update, as our rating has inexplicably jumped back up to 82 in August, again with no cricket played. I don’t know what the ICC are up to with their ratings as they don’t explain them to us any more.)
But anyway, leaving aside West Indies misfortune, we have a rating of 82 and we have upcoming test series against teams with ratings of 119 (Sri Lanka), 84 (Pakistan), 13 (Bangladesh) and 124 (Australia), spanning the whole spectrum of the rankings as they stand at the moment.
