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:
- Australia 254 -18
- South Africa 253 +19
- New Zealand 190
- India 167
- England 129
- Sri Lanka 12
- Pakistan -24
- West Indies -38
- Bangladesh -58
- Zimbabwe -281
- Ireland -292
- Afghanistan -311
Meanwhile, there is a small update to the official ratings to report, with Bangladesh dropping a point after their recent failure to defeat Afghanistan:
- Australia 126
- South Africa 119
- New Zealand 106
- India 105
- England 102
- Bangladesh 77 -1
- Sri Lanka 75
- West Indies 74
- Pakistan 71
- Zimbabwe 17
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