When we last looked at the cricket world ratings, calculated according to my Elo-based system, Australia were in the lead, with a margin of 26 points over India, who the ICC's system currently puts in first place. What does a lead of 26 points mean? Well, if Australia were to play India now, the expected result is 0.54 points to Australia; a pretty small margin. If India were to win that game, India's rating would improve by 19 points, and Australia's would fall by 19, so the two teams would swap places at the top of the rankings. In other words, it's a fairly small margin. As we've seen, in January 2008, Australia were also top, but were 222 points clear of their nearest rival, so on that scale, a lead of 26 is pretty small. In other words, there's no especially dominant team right now (which also makes it less surprising that the ICC system, and mine, answer this question differently).
In fact, Australia are playing a test series at the moment, but not against India. Instead, they're taking on the Antipodean rivals, New Zealand. New Zealand is a small country and their cricket team has never been rated best in the world. In fact, their current rating of 67 is as high as they've ever had (and in another form of the game, they reached the world cup final last year, so in general their cricket is not in too unhealthy a state). Within 50 points of second place, and within 100 of Australia, New Zealand are close to par with most of the other leading sides in test cricket.
Many of us remember the New Zealand team of Richard Hadlee in the 1980s, so I thought I'd look up that era's team and see how they compared (I've already covered many past Australian sides whilst reviewing the best historical teams in various posts). So here are the ratings from November 1985:
West Indies 158
New Zealand 28
Pakistan 20
England 20
Australia -38
India -69
Sri Lanka -119
And it's an interesting story: the West Indies were very strong, but it's notable how weak everyone else was in comparison. New Zealand were actually the pick of the rest, albeit a substantial 130 points behind. Australian cricket, on the other hand was at close to its lowest ebb (and the team had just lost the Ashes in England). New Zealand's rating was lower than it is now, but as we've discussed, the absolute rating is a measure of how the teams compare to their contempory rivals on average; the presence of weak Bangladeshi and Zimbabweab teams in test cricket today has increased the ratings of everyone else.
Anyway, can today's relatively strong New Zealand pull a surprise on Australia, or will Australia record another win (and maybe claim first place in the ICC's system as well, in which they had lagged India by just 1 point - the points in the two systems are not comparable, but 1 point is still a fairly small margin even under the ICC's rule)? Well, not in the first test, which has just been won by the Australians by a convincing margin. Our updated ratings look like this:
Australia 155 +13
India 116
Pakistan 93
South Africa 76
England 71
New Zealand 54 -13
Sri Lanka -4
West Indies -75
Bangladesh -172
Zimbabwe -315
So, no change in the pecking order, but Australia's win has slightly strengthened their position. The ICC ratings won't be redone until this (short) series is over, but a win obviously can't hurt Australia's chances there either. Australia may have lost some of their better cricketers recently (with the retirements of Michael Clark and Mitchell Johnson), but for the moment, they're strengthening their claim to be considered as the world's best team anyway.
The second test starts on Saturday.
No comments:
Post a Comment