A summer of cricket

The late winter and early spring have seen no test cricket; they have seen the 20-20 World Cup, in which West Indies beat England in an unexpected final.  Now, however, the English “summer” is getting underway, with a short series scheduled in which the home team will play Sri Lanka.  Pakistan will visit later in the summer.  In terms of my ratings, Pakistan (93) and England (71) are quite close together; Sri Lanka (-4) are somewhat further behind.  England’s predicted outcome from a game against Sri Lanka based on this difference in ratings is 0.63; remember, a difference of 100 is calibrated to mean an expected outcome of 0.67, or a 2-1 or 1-0 result in a 3 match series.  Sri Lanka have a tough series against Australia to follow (although they’ll be back at home for this one).

Pakistan of course beat England in the winter, but England may be confident with home advantage (obviously we’ll have to see how the Sri Lanka series goes first).  England may also be confident having just beaten South Africa away (although the brief ascendency they had over South Africa in the rankings was quickly given up when South Africa won the last, consolation test).  This raises a big question about the rankings: they give equal credit to all results, failing to take account of home advantage.  This is also a factor in the ICC ratings, however, which equally do not take venue into account.

One last thing to do before this summer’s games get played is to compare with my ratings (which were listed in my last post) and compare these to the current offical ratings, which are as follows:

1.  Australia    118

2.  India        112

3.  Pakistan     111

4.  England      105

5.  New Zealand   98

6.  South Africa  92

7.  Sri Lanka     88

8.  West Indies   65

9.  Bangladesh    57

10. Zimbabwe      12

So the order is very similar, with the main difference being that South Africa, who remained on top in that system for longer than they did in mine, have now fallen further.  Also, Australia appear more dominant according to my ratings than they do in the ICC’s.  But both systems give a similar pointer to the summer’s matches.  Whether things go as expected we’ll have to wait and see.