Indian cricket team skipper Virat Kohli has consolidated his position at the top of International Cricket Council (ICC) ODI rankings by reaching his career-best 911 points. Riding on his stellar campaign in limited over games in England, chinaman spinner Kuldeep Yadav has broken into the top ten in bowlers’ chart at the sixth position.
Their rise comes despite India losing the ODI series against England 1-2.
Kohli ended the series with scores 75, 45 and 71. He earned just two points but those were enough to take him to 911 points, highest since Australia’s Dean Jones tally of 918 points in March 1991.
Yadav has broken into the top-10 for the first time in his career. The left-arm wrist-spinner took nine wickets in the series, including six for 25 at Trent Bridge, which have been rewarded with a rise of eight places to a career-high sixth position, the ICC said in a statement.
Yadav is the second India bowler to feature in the top-10 after number-one ranked Jasprit Bumrah and the fifth spinner to find a place in the 10 highest-ranked bowlers. The other four are Rashid Khan (second), Imran Tahir (seventh), Adil Rashid (eighth) and Yuzvendra Chahal (10th).
England batsman Joe Root’s back-to-back centuries have helped him vault into second place in the rankings list. Root has leapfrogged Babar Azam (Pakistan), Rohit Sharma (India), David Warner (Australia) and Ross Taylor (New Zealand) to a career-high second position.
Root had scores of three, 113 not out and 100 not out, which earned him 34 points and have now put him 93 points behind Kohli. Root had previously reached fourth in the batting rankings in August 2016 and is now just one point below his career-best points tally of 819, which he had achieved against Australia earlier this year in Brisbane.
Jason Roy and Eoin Morgan are the other batsmen to improve their rankings in the latest table. Roy has moved up one place to 19th, while Morgan is now in 22nd spot after rising two places.
England pacer Liam Plunkett, has gained one place and is now 20th, Mark Wood is on a career-high 26th ranking after rising two places and David Willey has jumped 11 places to claim 31st position.
There is no change in the top five all-rounders, with Bangladesh’s Shakib Al Hasan leading the field.
In the Team Rankings, number-one ranked England has moved to 127 points after gaining one point, while India have dropped one point to finish on 121 points. This means the four-point pre-series gap has now extended to six points.
-With PTI inputs.