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#1
Read this today. Thoughts?
"PANIC!
Grab on to something stable.
Put the ambos on speed dial.
If you’re reading this standing up, sit down. If you’re of a nervous disposition stop reading and ask someone with Morgan Freeman’s voice to read it aloud for you – God will make it sound better.
Ok, here goes.
After three years, Australia is no longer the number-one ranked side in one-day international cricket.
The agony! The humiliation! The end of the world is nigh…
Probably not.
Why? Because rankings in sport, team sports especially, cricket specifically, are crap.
I could use only one example to illustrate my point, shutdown my computer and end this article at 100 words: according to FIFA, England is the third-ranked football team in the world. Stop giggling.
Yes, that’s the same England that exited the 2010 World Cup at the round of 16 and the same England that exited the 2012 European Championships at the quarter-finals. According to FIFA, England’s record in tournament qualifying and friendlies outweighs Uruguay’s fourth place at the 2010 World Cup and 2011 Copa America title combined. It makes the Three Lions superior to Italy, finalists of Euro 2012 who beat, oh yes, England, en route to the showpiece fixture.
Elsewhere on the list that reads like an inverted batting order, Greece is ranked higher than Brazil and for now there are apparently 21 sides better than Japan. Not for long.
With respect to the mathematician who designed what must be a staggeringly complex algorithm, those rankings are as useful a guide to footballing quality as Rebecca Wilson.
Anyway, that’s football, this is supposed to be about cricket.
The problem with rankings in all sports, especially cricket, is the inherent inconsistency of competition itself. To have confidence in rankings one would want all sides to play each other an even number of times in comparative conditions across a given period, sufficient to even out anomalies. Cricket being cricket, this is never going to happen. Thanks to politics, economics, hemispheric weather patterns and sheer bloody-mindedness, some sides don’t play each other at all, let alone evenly across time.
This is best highlighted by Bangladesh, who as recently as a fortnight ago, was the fourth-ranked side in international T20. That’s plausible, you might think. After all, T20 is more unpredictable than the other formats and Bangladesh has a smattering of match-winners. Take a closer look and you realise the Tigers have only played 12 T20Is in the last three years, and only six against Test playing nations. Of those six they won just once. So how do they rank so highly? Because they also played Ireland three times in the ranking period, accruing three away wins, propelling them into the upper echelon of T20 cricket and making a mockery of the ICC system.
In ODIs, South Africa, who pound for pound probably has the best cohort of players going around, ranks second to England. But the Proteas are being measured against just 14 matches in the ranking period, compared to Sri Lanka’s 32 and India’s 30. South Africa faced just five opponents in this run (including Ireland, but not the other two top-ranked sides in ODIs) with over 50 per cent of matches at home and just three in South Asia.
The ICC’s maths is designed to account for such discrepancies but even the most robust of systems becomes as flimsy as Chris Martin’s gormless prod when faced with these inputs. GIGO – garbage in, garbage out – has rarely been more appropriate.
The number of Tests played by ranking sides is much more even (again, South Africa aside) but cricket’s most venerated format still suffers from inconsistencies of planning and also the farcical situation whereby Test series can now be played in tandem under significantly different rules owing to the arbitrary implementation of DRS.
These various rankings are disproportionately important in cricket due to the competing formats making the proclamation of overall cricket champion nigh on impossible. Nobody can ever win The Cricket.
So what’s the solution?
Most sports, including limited-overs cricket, have periodic tournaments to determine the best team at that given time. It perhaps doesn’t reflect greatness over a period (sorry South Africa) but knock-out competitions are the very essence of sport. The winning of a trophy and the awarding of medals is what motivates players and excites supporters. In short, it works.
The Test situation is altogether more unsatisfying as there is no World Cup equivalent – rankings are all we have. Attempts to engineer a Test World Championship have failed, with financial considerations prioritising the Champions Trophy on the calendar for the time being, with a never-never date of 2017 set for the BCCI’s next veto.
This lack of an end point, combined with such feeble rankings means Test cricket is essentially an exhibition sport. Of Test cricket’s many anachronisms this is perhaps its hamartia, its most tragic flaw.
How many other sports have at its pinnacle what boils down to little more than glorified friendlies? The concept is for a former age, one when sport as a discipline was savoured, regardless of results. The world is now more utilitarian and satisfaction is measured in tangibles, not aesthetics – there has to be a point to everything. The Ashes aside, it is no longer enough to justify a sporting contest that lasts two months to be only about national pride. The current ends are not justifying the means – and the rankings are not helping.
So next time you despair at Australia’s rankings slide, or perhaps exalt at a ladder climb, just remember they’re ultimately pointless exercises to fill time between World Cups, or, in the case of Test cricket, simply pointless exercises just to fill time – much like Test cricket itself."
"PANIC!
Grab on to something stable.
Put the ambos on speed dial.
If you’re reading this standing up, sit down. If you’re of a nervous disposition stop reading and ask someone with Morgan Freeman’s voice to read it aloud for you – God will make it sound better.
Ok, here goes.
After three years, Australia is no longer the number-one ranked side in one-day international cricket.
The agony! The humiliation! The end of the world is nigh…
Probably not.
Why? Because rankings in sport, team sports especially, cricket specifically, are crap.
I could use only one example to illustrate my point, shutdown my computer and end this article at 100 words: according to FIFA, England is the third-ranked football team in the world. Stop giggling.
Yes, that’s the same England that exited the 2010 World Cup at the round of 16 and the same England that exited the 2012 European Championships at the quarter-finals. According to FIFA, England’s record in tournament qualifying and friendlies outweighs Uruguay’s fourth place at the 2010 World Cup and 2011 Copa America title combined. It makes the Three Lions superior to Italy, finalists of Euro 2012 who beat, oh yes, England, en route to the showpiece fixture.
Elsewhere on the list that reads like an inverted batting order, Greece is ranked higher than Brazil and for now there are apparently 21 sides better than Japan. Not for long.
With respect to the mathematician who designed what must be a staggeringly complex algorithm, those rankings are as useful a guide to footballing quality as Rebecca Wilson.
Anyway, that’s football, this is supposed to be about cricket.
The problem with rankings in all sports, especially cricket, is the inherent inconsistency of competition itself. To have confidence in rankings one would want all sides to play each other an even number of times in comparative conditions across a given period, sufficient to even out anomalies. Cricket being cricket, this is never going to happen. Thanks to politics, economics, hemispheric weather patterns and sheer bloody-mindedness, some sides don’t play each other at all, let alone evenly across time.
This is best highlighted by Bangladesh, who as recently as a fortnight ago, was the fourth-ranked side in international T20. That’s plausible, you might think. After all, T20 is more unpredictable than the other formats and Bangladesh has a smattering of match-winners. Take a closer look and you realise the Tigers have only played 12 T20Is in the last three years, and only six against Test playing nations. Of those six they won just once. So how do they rank so highly? Because they also played Ireland three times in the ranking period, accruing three away wins, propelling them into the upper echelon of T20 cricket and making a mockery of the ICC system.
In ODIs, South Africa, who pound for pound probably has the best cohort of players going around, ranks second to England. But the Proteas are being measured against just 14 matches in the ranking period, compared to Sri Lanka’s 32 and India’s 30. South Africa faced just five opponents in this run (including Ireland, but not the other two top-ranked sides in ODIs) with over 50 per cent of matches at home and just three in South Asia.
The ICC’s maths is designed to account for such discrepancies but even the most robust of systems becomes as flimsy as Chris Martin’s gormless prod when faced with these inputs. GIGO – garbage in, garbage out – has rarely been more appropriate.
The number of Tests played by ranking sides is much more even (again, South Africa aside) but cricket’s most venerated format still suffers from inconsistencies of planning and also the farcical situation whereby Test series can now be played in tandem under significantly different rules owing to the arbitrary implementation of DRS.
These various rankings are disproportionately important in cricket due to the competing formats making the proclamation of overall cricket champion nigh on impossible. Nobody can ever win The Cricket.
So what’s the solution?
Most sports, including limited-overs cricket, have periodic tournaments to determine the best team at that given time. It perhaps doesn’t reflect greatness over a period (sorry South Africa) but knock-out competitions are the very essence of sport. The winning of a trophy and the awarding of medals is what motivates players and excites supporters. In short, it works.
The Test situation is altogether more unsatisfying as there is no World Cup equivalent – rankings are all we have. Attempts to engineer a Test World Championship have failed, with financial considerations prioritising the Champions Trophy on the calendar for the time being, with a never-never date of 2017 set for the BCCI’s next veto.
This lack of an end point, combined with such feeble rankings means Test cricket is essentially an exhibition sport. Of Test cricket’s many anachronisms this is perhaps its hamartia, its most tragic flaw.
How many other sports have at its pinnacle what boils down to little more than glorified friendlies? The concept is for a former age, one when sport as a discipline was savoured, regardless of results. The world is now more utilitarian and satisfaction is measured in tangibles, not aesthetics – there has to be a point to everything. The Ashes aside, it is no longer enough to justify a sporting contest that lasts two months to be only about national pride. The current ends are not justifying the means – and the rankings are not helping.
So next time you despair at Australia’s rankings slide, or perhaps exalt at a ladder climb, just remember they’re ultimately pointless exercises to fill time between World Cups, or, in the case of Test cricket, simply pointless exercises just to fill time – much like Test cricket itself."

