Stay with us on this one, because it’s a wild ride. But Steve Smith has once again ascended to the number one slot on the ICC men’s test batting rankings. Which is wild considering he’s, y’know, very much suspended at the moment.
[jwplayer uhR6V6TN]
India’s Virat Kholi had very briefly overtaken Smith at the top of the ICC rankings, before putting efforts of 23 and 17 at Lord’s during India’s recent absurd thumping by England to the tune of an innings and 159 runs punted him back down the rankings, returning Smith to the global top spot.
Even though he’s serving a twelve-month suspension right now.
And even though he hasn’t played a test match since March.
Virat Kohli slips below Steven Smith in the ICC Test rankings after scores of 23 and 17 at Lord’s https://t.co/JYJ5IozsS3 #ENGvIND pic.twitter.com/fWxAUgkGCi
— ESPNcricinfo (@ESPNcricinfo) August 13, 2018
There it is. Steve Smith. Best batsman in the world currently. And David Warner at number five. Incredible stuff, really.
The reason for it is fairly complicated and really only winds up making the ICC’s ranking system look ridiculous, but nonetheless:
Prior to his suspension for ball tampering, Smith was in the middle of a humungous wave of form; he’s topped the rankings at the conclusion of the past three calendar years and had achieved a ranking score peak of 947, which throughout the history of cricket has only ever been topped by Sir Donald Bradman, who got to a high-water mark of 961. That’s out of a possible total of 1,000 just as an FYI.
Now then, Smith once again sits on top of the mountain for a few reasons. Most of them completely stupid.
Firstly, the suspension given to Smith was imposed by Cricket Australia, not the game’s global governing body.
Secondly, the rankings don’t really punish you for simply not playing. Certainly not as hard as they punish you for playing a game and sucking in it. A player forced out via injury or other means will have their ranking slowly decrease over time, remaining in the rankings provided they’ve played a game inside the ranking period, which for test cricket is anywhere between 12 and 15 months. Once Smith returns from his suspension next March, if Australia doesn’t play a Test for the first few months, then Smith might drop out.
Thirdly, his absurdly high score is incredibly difficult to achieve, let alone overtake, thanks to a complicated algorithm that assesses playing performance on things other than just averages.
Or, to put all this more succinctly:
https://twitter.com/ImranGarda/status/1029028795716648960
Bingo.
Steve Smith’s suspended ass. Still the best batsman in the world. How cooked is cricket sometimes.
