SIKANDAR Raza followed up his twin match-winning centuries against Bangladesh with one more against India though in a losing cause in the final ODI and jumped four spots to No. 25 (joint with David Miller).
Shubman Gill, meanwhile, rose a remarkable 93 spots to 38th after topping the run-scorers’ list in Zimbabwe with 245 runs. Kagiso Rabada earned the Playerof-the-Match award and made the honours board at Lord’s last week, and his matchwinning seven-wicket haul has now pushed him to No. 3 on the Test bowling rankings.
It was a jump of two places, past Shaheen Afridi and Jasprit Bumrah, and Rabada is now only behind Pat Cummins and R Ashwin on the table. The win, by an innings and 12 runs, gave South Africa a 1-0 lead in the three-Test series against England, and strengthened their position at the top of the World Test Championship (WTC) table.
A number of South Africa’s other players also gained on the rankings tables at the end of it. Anrich Nortje (six wickets in the Test) rose 14 spots to No. 25 among bowlers, Dean Elgar (47 in South Africa’s only innings) moved up one spot to 13th among batters, and Marco Jansen (four wickets) gained 17 spots to 17th place for bowlers.
There was a lot of ODI cricket on too this past week, with the Netherlands vs Pakistan and Zimbabwe vs India series ending with 3-0 wins for the respective visiting teams, and New Zealand winning 2-1 in the West Indies.
There was a change in the top five among ODI batters, with Imam-ul-Haq’s 2 and 6 in his two innings in the Netherlands pushing him down from No. 2 to No. 4, with Rassie van der Dussen and Quinton de Kock now positioned between No. 1 Babar Azam and Imam.
Kane Williamson (34 runs in his only innings) and Shikhar Dhawan (154 runs in three innings) swapped places, Williamson moving up to 11 and Dhawan dropping to 12. Some distance below them, there were two batters who recorded dramatic promotions. —ESPNcricinfo