Cricket World Ratings 28th July 2020

The cancellation of test match cricket due to the COVID-19 crisis is obviously not the worst thing that has happened in the world this year; but its restart is still good news.  West Indies have been playing in England, behind closed doors and with both teams isolated from the general public.  It's been a good series, made more interesting by the well-deserved victory secured by the visitors in the first game of the series.  But concerns that the West Indian batting line up was limited were proven in the last two tests; the first of which was a fairly competitive game, but the second of which was not.  England secured a 2-1 victory, but it was a good series and a welcome step back towards normality.

My cricket world ratings now look like this:

Australia     220    
India         212    
New Zealand   175    
England       173 -22  
Sri Lanka      84    
Pakistan       83    
South Africa   59    
West Indies     9 +22  
Bangladesh   -122    
Zimbabwe     -251    
Afghanistan  -303    
Ireland      -339

Interestingly, the series has actually worsened England's rating, and improved that of the West Indies, such was the difference in expectation based on their prior results.  West Indies certainly looked more competitive than that, even though clearly England were the stronger team, and the ratings thus show a narrowed gap.

The other feature of note in the list is, that after a long period of Indian dominance, Australia are top.  This happened just before the shutdown, when New Zealand beat India 2-0 at home and India fell from number one position.  At that time, however, India remained a long way clear in the official ratings.  The official ratings are calculated not completely disimilliarly to mine, but the system is more complicated and, unlike my ratings, gets annually refreshed with older results discarded.  That refresh has brought the offical ratings closer in line to my own:

Australia     116 +8
New Zealand   115 +5
India         110 -6
England       104 -1
Sri Lanka      91
South Africa   90 -8
Pakistan       86 +1
West Indies    82 +1
Bangladesh     55 -6
Zimbabwe       18 +1 

India have fallen as far as 3rd, and Afghanistan and Ireland, test cricket's two newbies, no longer have sufficient matches in the qualifying period to be included.  I find it a bit strange that all these changes can take place without any cricket actually being played, but the overall orders are quite similar.

Next up: Pakistan replace West Indies in the English "bubble", for another series the home side will expect to win but cannot take for granted.