England won their second test against Pakistan. It's a much needed win after a terrible run, but Pakistan have now drawn their last two series in England. England have been much less competitive in Pakistan's adopted home of the United Arab Emirates (where they play due to security concerns in their real homeland), where the team have been regularly well beaten.
Meanwhile, the West Indies won their first game in Sri Lanka, and drew their second; and Afghanistan have been admitted to test cricket, playing (and losing) their first match against India. As I discussed in my last post, when Ireland were admitted, my ratings measure each team's superiority (or otherwise) to an average test team, and newcomers are assumed to rate at the bottom; so these two new admissions have sent everybody else's score upwards, which is not ideal, but there's no absolute scale to measure cricketing achievement: you have to zero the ratings somewhere.
So the current charts are as follows:
India 236 +30
South Africa 227 +30
Australia 166 +29
New Zealand 144 +29
England 74 +47
Sri Lanka 63 +2
Pakistan 40 +12
West Indies 3 +57
Bangladesh -73 +40
Zimbabwe -260 +29
Ireland -295 +30
Afghanistan -325
The official ratings don't include unfinished series (Sri Lanka and West Indies still have a game to play); don't yet include the two new nations; and undergo an annual revision which introduces some discontinuities; so there are some differences, although the top seven teams are the same in both cases. It's notable that in the official lists, Bangladesh, who've had a scattering of decent results in the last couple of years, now rate quite clearly above the once mighty West Indies:
India 125 +4
South Africa 112 -5
Australia 106 +4
New Zealand 102
England 97
Sri Lanka 94 -1
Pakistan 88
Bangladesh 75 +4
West Indies 67 -5
Zimbabwe 2 +1
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