Jasprit Bumrah, Virat Kohli and Yashasvi Jaiswal made huge gains in the ICC Test rankings.
Players of the Indian cricket team have made giant strides in the with Jasprit Bumrah, Virat Kohli and Yashasvi Jaiswal setting the ICC Test rankings on fire. After India’s comprehensive 2-0 sweep of Bangladesh, Bumrah has emerged as the No. 1 bowler, Kohli has entered the top 10 and Jaiswal bagged his career-best place in the ICC Test rankings for batters. Last week, at the conclusion of the 1st Test, Ravichandran Ashwin was still leading the charts, but Bumrah’s match-haul of five wickets in Chennai really pushed the India off-spinner. But on Tuesday, as India pushed a result in just five sessions despite rain threatening to play spoil sport, Bumrah’s figures of 3/15 and 3/17 dethroned Ashwin from the top and fires him to the top with 870 points, one more than his teammate.
Jaiswal, who struck twin half-centuries in the Kanpur Test and revolutionised India’s batting in the first innings, jumped two positions to be placed third, behind legends Joe Root and Kane Williamson. Jaiswal was adjudged player of the match, ahead of Ashwin and Bumrah, both of whom played stirring roles with the ball, but without his and India’s batting onslaught on Day 4, pushing a result out of the 2nd Test would have qualified as nothing more than a dream. Jaiswal has enjoyed a fabulous start to his Test career since making his debut against West Indies last August. In 11 Tests, the left-handed opener has scored 1271 runs at an average of 64.05 including back-to-back double centuries.
Virat Kohli’s accent
Kohli’s climb comes as a huge sigh of relief. It was around the same time two years ago in 2022, that Kohli fell out of the top 10 for the first time in years, although he reclaimed it earlier this year when India toured South Africa. After his escalated him to scores of 6 and 17 in Chennai, Kohli dropped out of it again, but a much better outing in Kanpur – 47 and 29 not out has escalated him to the sixth position, below Steve Smith at 4 and Usman Khawaja at 5th. Kanpur Test was the best Kohli has batted in months. He missed out on a fifty in an attempt to up the ante but in the process, completed 27,000 runs in international cricket, becoming the fastest to the landmark beating Sachin Tendulkar to it.
Among spinners, Ravindra Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav remain constant at 6th and 16th respectively, while Ashwin drops to No. 2. The veteran off-spinner scored 114, picked up a five-wicket-haul at the Chepauk, and followed it with 2/45 and 3/50 at the Green Park Stadium, collectively winning the Player of the Series award, and this, levelling the great Muttiah Muralitharan for the most Man-of-the-Series honour. Jadeja, meanwhile, joined an illustrious list becoming only the third Indian after Kapil Dev and Ashwin to achieve the bumper double of completing 3000 runs and 300 Test wickets. He couldn’t do much with the bat but picked a crucial 3/34, triggering Bangladesh’s batting collapse on Day 5.
