Pakistan Cricket Team has retained its position at the top of the ICC T20 cricket rankings with teams from all five regions also ranked in the most accessible form of the game. The International Cricket Council (ICC) has extended T20 Rankings to 80 teams in which Pakistan is No.1 in the updated list.
Teams like Austria, Botswana, Luxembourg and Mozambique are among the sides figuring in the first men’s T20I ranking table that features all Members meeting the criteria of having played six matches against other ICC members since May 2016.
The move to expand the table follows ICC’s decision last year that all men’s T20 matches between Members from 1 January 2019 will be classified as internationals. As with the ICC Women’s T20I Team Rankings, which were launched in October 2018, teams will need to play six matches against other teams in the previous three to four years to remain in the rankings table.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has consolidated its position at the top of the table. Pakistan the former ICC T20 World Cup champions in 2009, have got 286 points while the next four teams are within two points of each other – South Africa (262), England (261), Australia (261) and India (260).
South Africa and India have swapped positions two and five in the expanded table, whose launch coincides with the annual rankings update in which series results from 2015-16 are removed and outcomes from 2016-17 and 2017-18 are weighted at 50 per cent.
In other significant changes, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka have moved up one place each to seventh and eighth positions, respectively, with the West Indies going down to ninth position. In what will be big news for their passionate fans, Nepal have moved from 14th to 11th position while Namibia have grabbed 20th position.