KARACHI: Pakistan ranked in seventh two behind India in the inaugural International Cricket Council (ICC) T20 International country and player rankings. All-rounders Shahid Afridi, Mohammad Hafeez, Abdul Razzak, batsmen Umar Akmal and bowler Saeed Ajmal made the list of released on Monday in Dubai.
In the all-rounders list, Shahid Afridi came in second behind Australian Shane Watson. Hafeez was ranked fourth and Abdul Razzaq ranked 10th. Spin bowler Saeed Ajmal ranked in third on the bowlers list, while batsman Umar Akmal ranked in eighth in the batsmen’s list.
England's Eoin Morgan, and Sri Lanka’s Ajantha Mendis topped the batsman, and bowler, respectively.
In 18 T20Is, Morgan has scored 569 runs at an average of 47.41 and only Matthew Hayden (308 runs at 51.33) and Andrew Symonds (337 runs at 48.14) have better averages than the left-hander.
While Morgan is the only batsman to boast a rating of over 800 points on the day of the launch, New Zealand's Brendon McCullum and Kevin Pietersen of England are both within striking range.
Second-ranked McCullum is on 799 ratings points while third-ranked Pietersen is sitting on 793 ratings points.
The top 20 list includes four batsmen each from Australia and South Africa and three each from Sri Lanka and India.
Ajantha Mendis, who won the ICC Emerging Player of the Year award at the LG ICC Awards in Dubai in 2008, leads the field in the bowlers' category.
The 26-year-old from Moratuwa is the fourth leading wicket-taker behind Pakistan trio - Shahid Afridi (53), Umar Gul (47) and Saeed Ajmal (45) - with 39 wickets in 20 matches. His bowling figures of six for 16 against Australia in Pallekele on 8 August 2011 stands as the best bowling figures in T20Is to date.
The salient feature of the bowlers' ranking is that seven spinners figure inside the top 10.
Shane Watson leads the all-rounders' category that also includes three Pakistanis in second-ranked Afridi, fourth-ranked Mohammad Hafeez and 10th-ranked Abdul Razzaq inside the top 10.
David Hussey is in third position as the top 10 also includes two South Africans in Jacques Kallis and Albie Morkel.
A surprise in the country ranknings was the inclusion of non test playing nation Afghanistan in the top 10 with 75 points. Zimbabwe brought up the rear with 54 points.
The full rankings, with points are listed below.
Countries: England (127), Sri Lanka (126), New Zealand (117), South Africa (113), India (112), Australia (111), Pakistan (97), West Indies (89), Afghanistan (75), Zimbabwe (54)
Batsmen: E.J.G. Morgan (832), England; B.B. McCullum (799), New Zealand; K.P. Pietersen (793), England; D.P.M.D. Jayawardena (784), Sri Lanka; S. Raina (742), India; T.M. Dilshan (733), Sri Lanka; K.C. Sangakkara (732),Sri Lanka; Umar Akmal (714), Pakistan; S.R. Watson (701), Australia; G.C. Smith (700), South Africa.
Bowlers: B.A.W. Mendis (748), Sri Lanka; G.P. Swann (727), England; Saeed Ajmal (721), Pakistan; N.L. McCullum (711), New Zealand; J. Botha (703), South Africa; Shahid Afridi (689), Pakistan; S.W. Tait (682), Australia; D.J.G. Sammy (671), West Indies; Harbhajan Singh (653), India; S.L. Malinga (652), Sri Lanka.
All rounders: S.R. Watson (385), Australia; Shahid Afridi (339), Pakistan; D.J. Hussey (316), Australia; Mohammad Hafeez (246), Pakistan; C.H. Gayle (194), West Indies; Yuvraj Singh (182), India; J.H. Kallis (179), South Africa; T.M. Dilshan (169), Sri Lanka; J.A. Morkel (164), South Africa; Abdul Razzaq (163), Pakistan.
COMMENTS (28)
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This is hilarious... Pakistan should be within top 3 teams in the world......not the bottom three....
ICC waited for an eternity so that rankings are only issued when Pakistan can not be no.1... If rankings were released in 2007,2008,2009 or 2010 then Pakistan would have been no.1,....surely....what else do you expect from a team which has 3 best all rounders and top 3 wicket takers....add to that a very healthy T20 top order in Akmals, Hafeez, Misbah etc....still they are ranked no.7 ... because they were under pressure during the last couple of years....due to things like terrorism, no games in Pakistan, captaincy, bad board management and above all Indian betting lobby and spot fixing conspiracies.... Just imagine if Indian team has to go through the same ordeals like Pakistan...I think they will cease to exist as a team....Thet team that played Last Pak v SL test was totally different from lords\Oval test...something like 10 new players.....!!!! can any other team regroup and play competitively the way we did...??????
Its a RAW CIA MOSSAD Conspiracy against Pakistan
@SaudiRules: learn to appreciate if you're doing good at some specific area.. i dont know why we criticize each and everything politically. You surely have molded your brain by watching political talk shows.
@Aarm: "just to make india happy"
Why do you think that 5th rank makes Indian happy? Everything is not a conspiracy by Indians against Pakistanis.
Who cares bout these ratings - ratings shamatings who cares?
We will win the next t20 final - God willing!
Somebody rightly said "What do you expect from reliance" Quite right as intentionally these rankings delayed to get the 2009 T20 tournament which was won by Pakistan. ICC and indian lobby want Pakistan cricket totally let down and discouraged. This is discouragement as Pakistan is the only team in the world to feature twice in the finals and all three occasions into semis but still at No.7, let them enjoy...why this ranking was not introduced when we were at the top of T20??????
Nevertheless, we need to improve the cricket
Pakistani media fails to mention the 4-1 defeat of India by Pakistan in hockey. If Pakistan was defeated, they would have mentioned it on the first page.
just to make india happy . icc is being rubbish
@SK: "This list was probably devised by some Indian or BCCI dude. No need to take this seriously." Did you notice that India is number 5 as well? Enough with your conspiracy theories. Learn to look at facts onjectively.
@Xyz: "WHAT! 7th?? 1 world cup win, 1 world cup final and a semi final and we get ranked 7th??" This is T20 ranking. The World CUp final and victory do not play a role. West Indies had 2 World Cup victories and it is ranked even lower than Pakistan.
Also most rankings are based on recent performances. So Martina Navrotilova who won Wimbledon 9 times does not have any ranking currently in female tennis players.
@x: You missed Pakistan 2-0 victory over Australia in July 2010 in England. But still Pakistan deserve this ranking because they lost alot of matches in last year which has the highest weightage.
Where is umar Gul with 47 wickets. How can u rank Pakistan 7th Totally biased i never trust this ranking system as ICC is puppet of BCCI......... Example 20-20 champions trophy they always deny domestic team to participate in tournament
Lets look at the facts.
It is interesting how we just remember the glory days of pakistani t20 cricket the icc uses the matches from the last year and a half (i guess) to calculate rankings. Here are the results of the 12 matches that we played during that time are as follows
vs zim, 2-0 sept 2011 vs wi, 0-1 apr 2011 vs nz, 1-2 dec 2010 vs sa, 0-2 oct 2010 vs eng, 0-2 sept 2010 vs eng, 1-1 feb 2010
The only series we won in this period is the recent one against zimbabwe, and although we show promise of improving and playing better in the coming season, that obviously will not reflect in the past results.
In all we have won only 4 out of 12 matches ( 2 of which were against zimbabwe), I do not think that at this point we can demand a higher position in the ranking than number 7.
It is certainly true that we have won many series and world championships before this period, but they rightly do not count in this period.
Just wanna say one thing... Shame on ICC I can still bet there is no better team than Pakistan in this format, we have proved that with our consistent performance but still...what can one say to ICC(Indian Cricket Council)..
At least, we are in top ten, like all the other lists such as corruption, number of journalist killed etc.
This is hilarious and interesting at the same time... Does any one know the reason why the period for rankings begins in August 2009??? Well, if we had started from June or May 2009, it would have included the World T20 in June which Pakistan won, and in that case, Pakistan would have ranked around 2 or 3 at worst... Quite intriguing how the whole system is provide some value to T20s and how it can be quite meaningless due to the arbitrary use of stats....!!
Seriously 7th????? How is England ranked number one? We have reached at least the semifinal of the last three t20 wcs and we are ranked below South Africa ,New Zealand and Sri Lanka?? Totally baised ranking then again what do you expect from the ICC..
this is a joke!!!! what else you can expect from Reliance?
WHAT! 7th?? 1 world cup win, 1 world cup final and a semi final and we get ranked 7th??
Wohooo Congratulations!! Go team green!