With the victory over Australia in the first Test of the Border Gavaskar Trophy in Nagpur, India moved to the top of ICC’s Test rankings. This means that the Indian men’s cricket team is now the top ranked team in all three formats of the game.
Recently, India had gone to the top of ODI rankings with their 3-0 series win over New Zealand which complemented their number one rank in T20I.
However, to maintain their top ranking in Test cricket, India will have to win the second Test against Australia which is scheduled to begin on February 17 in Delhi. That would also help the Indian team in solidifying their grip on a qualifying position for the World Test Championship final in June. India will have to win the series by a margin of either 3-1 or 3-0 to make it to the final.
In the first Test, India defeated Australia by an innings and 132 runs with Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Rohit Sharma being the star performers for the team. As a result, all of them have a boost to their rankings.
For India, Ashwin moved to the second spot in the Test bowling rankings with eight wickets in the match. He is only behind Pat Cummins by 21 rating points, while Jadeja stayed on top of the all rounders rankings with seven wickets and an all important 70. Jadeja also rose four spots to 16th among bowlers.
Elsewhere, Axar Patel took just one wicket in the match, but was crucial with the bat for India. He scored his personal highest Test runs of 84 in the match. With that innings, he rose six places to seventh in all rounders’ rankings.
Moreover, Rohit Sharma moved up two spots to eighth among Test batters with his 120 that helped India put up a total of 400 on a challenging pitch.
Meanwhile, Marnus Labuschagne and Steven Smith retained their number one and number two positions in the batting charts standing out as Australia’s best batters in an otherwise poor batting performance.
On the other hand, Usman Khawaja and Davind Warner lost ground after their poor displays in both the innings in Nagpur. Khawaja dropped two places to tenth, while Warner went down six spots to 20th.
