India losing its Test ranking to Australia came as a huge shock for the Indian cricket fans and something difficult to swallow.
India had been retaining its undisputed number 1 spot in the Test cricket for the last 3 years and to be precise, 42 months. On one hand, where India descended down to the third spot with 114 points, New Zealand saw a considerable improvement in their ranking as they climbed on the second position with 115 points. Australia grabbed the first position with 116 points.
It is not just the Test format that observed a shuffling of team rankings. The rankings have been revised in other forms of the game too which is the ODI as well as the T20 cricket.
India’s dominance in Test rankings can be very well justified considering their performance in the 2016-17 calendar year where they played 17 Test matches out of which they won 12 matches and lost just one.
Additionally, India has also won 18 Test matches since May 2017 only behind England who had 20 victories from May 2017 onwards.
However, if you talk about Australia they were at 5th place when it comes to rankings and victories in the 2016-17 calendar year, and since May 2017 they had been placed on the 3rd position.
The questions that arise here are ‘How does the ICC algorithm work’ and if India were ahead of Australia ‘How did Australia surpass India?’ Let’s have a look.
In Test Rankings, the points are calculated based on a team’s performance in each series. The aggregate of each team divided by the number of Test matches they have played in a particular series gives us a rating.
This indicates that if a team wins each match of the series, they will have an edge and if they lose all the matches of the series, or in the cricketing term being whitewashed. it will cost them a large number of points.
As the new ICC ranking considered 100 percent matches played in 2019 and 50 percent matches played in 2016-17 and 2017-18 season, Australia got an edge over India.
India won 8 out of 11 matches they played since May 2017 while Australia in the same time -period won 4 out of 9 series.
Unlike the Aussies, the Indian team has wins against lower-ranked teams as they won all the seven tests played against West Indies, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan who are standing currently at number 8, number 9 and number 10 positions respectively.
The series defeats against England in 2018 where India lost the Test series by 1-4 and in New Zealand by 0-2 came as a huge blow to India.
Australia surely lost the Test series against South Africa in the same calendar year but after getting defeated from England they made a comeback. It is because of a good comeback from Australia that the series ended in a draw.
