Rohit Sharma, R Ashwin achieve career-best ICC Test rankings

The results of the last two Test matches between India and England have impacted the International Cricket Council (ICC) Test rankings massively as the top performers have jumped on the rankings while others have slid down.

Top scorer from either side in the last two Tests--Rohit Sharma has jumped to his all-time high position on the ICC Rankings for batsmen in Tests. He has jumped to the eighth position with 742 rating points, which is 20 more than his previous best of 722 points attained in 2019. He had scored a magnificent 161 runs in the first innings of the second Test against England to set up the game for India on a pitch that was offering a lot of assistance to spinners.

Rohit has replaced his teammate and India’s number in Tests--Chetehswar Pujara, who unusually has gone two consecutive Tests with a string of low scores on Indian pitches, at the eighth position. Pujara has slid to 10th position on the ICC Rankings that also includes Indian skipper Virat Kohli at the number five position.

On the ICC Rankings for bowlers in Tests, spinners from both sides have made significant gains.

Man of the match with an 11-wicket haul in the last Test, Axar Patel has leapfrogged 30 positions to reach the 38th position on the rankings table. On the other hand, Ravichandran Ashwin made an inroad into the ranking above him and jumped four places to the third position, only behind Australia’s Pat Cummins and New Zealand’s Neil Wagner.

English spinner Jack Leach has not been able to win Tests for his team in the last two games against India, but his own performances have been tremendous. He has jumped three places to breach the list of top-30 bowlers on the ICC Rankings.

Meanwhile, the ICC has also notified that the rankings system will be made a weekly-updating system starting in March 2021. According to the weekly system, the men’s rankings table will be updated every Wednesdays at 08h00 GMT for all formats of the game, and all the performances till every Tuesdays will be considered. For the women’s game, the rankings will be updated every Tuesdays at 08h00 GMT and similarly to the men’s rankings, all performances till the previous day will be considered. The ICC said that the first change in the rankings s per the new system will be made on March 2 (Tuesday) for women’s cricket while for men’s cricket, the first change will be on March 3 (Wednesday).

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NZ vs AUS | Final three T20Is to take place behind closed doors

The fans have been barred from the final three T20Is between New Zealand and Australia which will be played at Wellington Regional Stadium after a COVID-19 lockdown in Auckland. The third T20I that was earlier scheduled to take place in Auckland was moved to Wellington while the last two matches were also shifted to the same venue from Tauranga. “They’ve made sure that they’ve looked after the players’ mental and physical wellbeing and come to the right decision,” he told reporters on Monday. The Blackcaps lead the series 2-0 so far and need one more victory to take the unassailable lead in the series. Talking about the home support, Australia spinner Ashton Agar said that the crowd’s support does play an important role in boosting the team’s confidence. “A home ground advantage always helps when you’ve got a crowd that’s right behind their home team and that’s how it’s been so far,” he said. “It’s always a fun crowd here in New Zealand, it’s always a great atmosphere, so for them to not have that particularly on a game that the series hinges on could be a massive advantage for us.” The four Auckland based players (Chapman, Guptill, Neesham and Phillips) self-isolating in Wellington have now received negative COVID tests and will be able to train with the team on Tuesday. The third encounter between the two teams will take place on Wednesday. The second match turned out to be a close and high-scoring encounter. New Zealand batting first posted 219/4 in 20 overs riding on Martin Guptill’s 97 while Australia fell short of just 4 runs. Marcus Stoinis scored 78 off 37 but his innings went in vain as the visitors lost the match eventually.

Batting coach Jonathan Trott backs young batsmen's methods, suggests avoiding 'desperation'

England batting coach Jonathan Trott is not going hard at the batsmen, although they have flattered in the last two days and have allowed India to get back in the series after trailing 0-1. Trott said that aside does not become too bad over the course of two Test matches and that batsmen must not get desperate about getting runs against Indian spinners and instead focussing on the right mentality to keep challenging them on tricky pitches. "Of course it's disappointing the way the last two Tests have gone, but you don't become a bad side over two Tests. It's about being clear in how they want to go about it and not being too desperate. Sometimes you can want it too much. So getting the right kind of mentality is important,” Trott said in a virtual press conference. Trott also emphasized the importance of experience in playing on tricky surfaces such as in the last two Tests and highlighted the lack of it in the England batting order. All young batsmen such as Rory Burns, Dominic Sibley, and Ollie Pope have been found out against the variations and accuracy of Axar Patel and Ravichandran Ashwin, but Trott has backed their methods and ruled out any major changes in mid of a series. "Ollie Pope, Zak Crawley and Dom Sibley have played 44 Tests all together and a combined 11 in Asia, so it is tricky for those younger guys. You'd like to be able to learn and still win Test matches but unfortunately, that wasn't the case in the previous two. All our batters, I think, have a pretty good method so it's about going out there and executing it and not perhaps trying to change too much mid-series,” Trott added. The fourth and final Test of the series between India and England is scheduled to start on March 04 at the same venue as the third Test, and it is highly likely that the pitch will offer similar assistance to bowlers like it did in the last Test.

David Weise, Dunk and Zaman take Lahore home in a thriller against Karachi

It was a David Wiese show at the National Stadium Karachi as he hit six boundaries in nine balls to take Lahore Qalandars home in a thriller against Karachi Kings. Wiese arrived at the crease when 34 runs were needed off 16 balls and Dan Christian had removed a settled Fakhar Zaman. He took three balls and to hit just one four and just when fans thought that the chasing would get tougher for Qalandars, the South African got going, hitting his next six balls for 25 runs. Wiese was lucky no doubt. In the Mohammad Amir over, a miss-timed hook went over the keeper’s head for four while on the very next ball, a yorker got undercut by his bat to beat a wrong-footed Joe Clarke’ diving away to his left to go for another four. Surviving these two shots, he then hit Amir for six over mid-off and tilted the game in Qlanadars favour. Just when 10 runs were needed off the last over, Wiese was offered a length ball which he hit over’s the bowler’s head for a huge six, before hitting a four of the next ball to win the 11th game in a row for a team chasing in this year’s PSL. The Qalandars did not start the chase of 187 in the right manner with skipper Sohail Akhtar failing once again, getting run out even without facing a ball. Even Mohammad Hafeez, who had been an amazing form prior to this game also got out early today. Joe Denly was cleaned up by a classic inswinger by Mohammad Amir who was on fire in his first spell. It was then that Fakhar Zaman was joined by Ben Dunk, who had been a bad form before this game. The two then added 119 runs for the fifth wicket, taking the game close, which was finished by Weise. Earlier in the evening, Karachi, who were put to bat first did not have a good start as Shaheen Afridi cleaned up Pak skipper Babar Azam with a breathtaking inswinger. Sharjeel who was dropped by Akhtar at mid-on made good use of the chance and scored a 39 ball 64 with some brilliant shots including a Nataraja six off Ahmed Daniyal. From struggling at 37-3, Karachi made it to 113-4. Mohammad Nabi and Dan Christian also made useful contributions to take the total to 182 at the end of the 19th. In the last over, Shaheen Afridi gave away only three runs and picked up two wickets to end with match figures 3-27. He was awarded Man of the Match for this performance of his. This was Qalandar’s third win in four games at the National Stadium in Karachi and it pushed them to the second spot on the Points Table.

Abhishek Sharma dismantles Virat Kohli & Suryakumar Yadav's record in Vijay Hazare Trophy

Sunrisers Hyderabad youngster Abhishek Sharma has beaten Virat Kohli to become the second fastest Indian to score a century in List A cricket. The 20-year-old Punjab cricketer smashed a 42-ball hundred while chasing a mammoth 403-run target against Madhya Pradesh in the ongoing Vijay Hazare Trophy on Sunday, 28 February. Opening the innings for Punjab, Sharma was the only one to cross the 40-run mark for his team, fighting it out in the middle, while others perished around him. He was caught out in the 18th over after setting the stage on fire scoring 104 off 49 deliveries at a strike rate of over 200. The innings was 8 boundaries and 9 sixes. In his whirlwind innings, he dismantled the likes of Suryakumar Yadav and Virat Kohli who previously held the second and third spot behind Yusuf Pathan. While Kohli’s 52-ball century came against Australia back in 2013, Yadav recently dislodged the former for the second spot by completing his century in just 50 deliveries against Puducherry on 25 February. Sharma’s knock means that Sky and Kohli have been relegated to the third and fourth spot respectively. The wily left-hander was picked up by Sunrisers Hyderabad ahead of IPL 2020 and represented the side in eight matches. He picked up 2 wickets and scored 71 runs. A glimpse of his brilliance was seen in the match against CSK, where he and Priyam Garg, another SRH youngster, put together a crucial partnership of 77 runs to rescue the David Warner-led side from a disaster. Sharma was not out at 31 off 24 balls in that match. In other news, Karnataka batsman and Royal Challengers Bangalore batsman Devdutt Padikkal scored his third century in a row and now aggregates 572 runs from his last five matches.