Review of Test matches as on 02 Mar 2020

After New Zealand’s 2-0 victory over India, this is the WTC points table:

India is still leading, while NZ has collected 120 points from the series to reach 180 points and 3rd position here.

The updated ICC ratings:

India is still at the top, followed by NZ in second place. NZ is now just ahead of third-placed Australia.

In the rest of March and April, the forthcoming Test matches are:

SL v Eng (counted for WTC table, 120 points, 60 points for each Test):

1. At Galle, Mar 19-23

2. At Colombo (SSC), Mar 27-31

Pak v BD (2nd Test), counted for WTC table, 60 points for this Test:

2. at Karachi, Apr 5-9

(Pakistan already won the 1st Test at Rawalpindi in February).

No other Tests until June.

 

 

A mockery of cricket (1)

Over the last year, the ICC has decided to give T20I status to ANY match between men’s sides (as well as women’s sides) from countries whose cricket boards are part of ICC. This is regardless of cricketing ability.

This also means that all T20Is starting from 2018-2019 (for women’s matches) and 2019 for men’ s matches are included in official statistics as well as official rankings.

You can see statistics on http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html or similar sites.

And ICC rankings can be seen here: http://www.relianceiccrankings.com/test/date-specific.php  for player rankings

and http://www.espncricinfo.com/rankings/content/page/211271.html  for team rankings.

One expected outcome was very one-sided matches, such as this:

http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/25749943/all-14-china-slump-lowest-women-t20i-total

in which China was all out for 14 in 10 overs, in reply to UAE’s 203/3 in 20 overs. China’s efforts included 6 ducks and an unbeaten 0.

From the scorecard http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/19111/scorecard/1171353/china-women-vs-united-arab-emirates-women-group-a-thailand-womens-t20-smash-2018-19

we see that China at least has all or most of the players from their own country, while UAE’s team seems to include players from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka with a token local player (much like the UAE’s men’s teams of the past).

Knowing the Chinese, they will gradually get better and will probably be challenging established teams after a few years. At the time of writing in May 2019, you can see that UAE is ranked 16th and China 75th (out of 79). China is one of the 6 teams with zero points.

If this is a mockery of international cricket, there is a still bigger mockery when the national team of a Western European country entirely consists of South Asians. And that is true of men’s cricket as well. This will be covered next.