The official ratings, which use a similar (but more opaque) system to mine, also now show South Africa on top:
The two best teams in the world, Australia and South Africa, are currently playing a three match series against each other. And it will go down to the decider, after South Africa just levelled the series after losing the first match. An interesting thing, perhaps, is to compare this Australian side to that of 2005: full of players who've had brilliant careers, but who are no longer young. Could the end be coming? In fact, although some players ended their careers following Australia's surprise defeat in England that year, the next few years were still pretty good for Australia, who were top of my ratings in an unbroken run of over nine years from 1999 to 2008. Their current run is much shorter, but since March 2023 they've only been three months off top slot. They are now, however, perilously close to losing it again, leading the rankings by just one point:
Meanwhile, there is a small update to the official ratings to report, with Bangladesh dropping a point after their recent failure to defeat Afghanistan:
Two recent test matches have been played. Afghanistan managed to force a draw against Bangladesh, while Australia have returned to the top of the rankings by winning their first game in South Africa
England have completed a whitewash of Pakistan, an easy first series following the end of the Ben Stokes era against a sadly poor Pakistan team, who ten years ago held first place in the rankings but who have fallen on hard times of late:
In the official ratings (though not in mine), this defeat puts Pakistan behind the West Indies (and both trail Bangladesh):
Three test matches have recently been completed. Sri Lanka managed to draw their final test against India; Australia avenged their shock defeat by Bangladesh; but England made it 2/3 against Pakistan. The effect on my rankings is as follows:
What's notable is that all these results were mostly as expected; they hardly move the ratings needle at all. In the official ratings the effect of Bangladesh drawing a series down under is less notable for it's effect on Australia, who remain top, than it is on Bangladesh, who climb about Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and the West Indies:
The past month has seen some interesting cricket. Pakistan ended their dismal run by winning their second game against the West Indies, but have since crashed to a big loss in the first game of their tour of England. India have won their first game in Sri Lanka; but most shockingly, Bangladesh, who actually lost their last game to Zimbabwe, have just won a test in Australia for the first time. This has quite a big effect on my rankings which now look like this:
Australia fall from the top spot, with a massive 41 point swing on this one game alone; by contrast, England gain just 9 points from beating Pakistan at home. Australia had been top since February 2023, when India briefly held that position; South Africa were last in first place in January 2019. Bangladesh's current rating is an all time high and the team are within a whisker of overtaking the West Indies. The official ratings were updated with the conclusion of the Pakistan-West Indies series but actually changed nothing:
The West Indies have had some good results at home recently, winning a series against Sri Lanka and now adding a good victory in their first game (of two) against Pakistan. My world ratings now look like this:
For Pakistan, who led the ratings in 2016, this is a real low ebb. And the last time they were behind West Indies in the ratings appears to have been 1997! Although the last 30 years haven't exactly been great for the West Indies, since then they have had periods ahead of every other team with the exception of Australia. So to see this reversal is really quite striking.
