NEW DELHI: India’s Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have maintained their top two spots in the latest ICC ODI rankings for batsmen while ace fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah has stuck to his third spot in the bowlers’ list.
Skipper Kohli scored two half-centuries in the recently concluded three-match ODI series against Australia which India lost 1-2. Despite missing the ODI series against the Aaron Finch-led side owing to a hamstring injury, Sharma remains at number two, five points ahead of Babar Azam who is on third.
During the first ODI at the Sydney Cricket Ground, India batsman Hardik Pandya missed out closely from becoming the third batsman to score a century in the match following the likes of Finch and batsman Steven Smith. Playing his first ODI since the 2019 World Cup, Pandya struck 90 in the first game and 92 not out in the third to make his first appearance in the top 50 batsmen at 49th place with a career-best of 553 points.
From the Australian camp, Finch’s innings of 114 in the first ODI, followed by 60 and 75 in the subsequent matches has helped him up to a career-best tally of 791 points and fifth place, just behind his best of fourth achieved earlier June 2019.
Smith’s pair of 62-ball centuries in the first two ODIs against the Men in Blue has enabled him to move back into top 20 ODI batters for the first time since 2018. He is currently at number fifteen with 707 points. Glenn Maxwell’s 167 runs in the series came at a strike rate of 194.18 and featured two half-centuries, to push him back up to 20th rank. This is the first time he has been in the top 20 since February 2017.
In a series dominated by batsmen, Adam Zampa made the big impact with the ball, enabling him an entry in the top 20 ODI bowlers for the very first time. Zampa’s seven wickets at 23 took him to the fourteenth position with a career-best 623 points. Josh Hazlewood took six wickets and moved up a place to the sixth rank. Bumrah is placed at the third spot behind Afghanistan’s Mujeeb ur Rahman.
Legendary batsman Sunil Gavaskar believes current skipper Virat Kohli has been the most impactful player for India in One-Day Internationals in this decade.
Kohli, who made his international debut in 2008, has so far played 251 ODIs for India in which he has scored 12,040 runs with the help of 43 hundreds.
“I think if you look as an individual then certainly it’s got to be Virat Kohli, because if you look at the number of matches he’s won for India when India has been chasing big scores,” Gavaskar said while speaking on Star Sports show Cricket Connected.
“I look at the impact a player has had, and not just the runs or wickets that he has taken, and in that aspect you have got to say that in this decade it really has been Virat Kohli who has had the most impact on the matches that India has won,” he added.
Kohli has been nominated for the International Cricket Councils (ICC) Men’s Player of the Decade award.
The 32-year-old, who leads Team India in all three formats, has been nominated for Male Cricketer of the Decade alongside Ravichandran Ashwin, Joe Root (England), Kane Williamson (New Zealand), Steve Smith (Australia), AB de Villiers (South Africa), and Kumar Sangakkara (Sri Lanka).