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The final ranking
Test Updates: |
June 4, 2002 India seventh, could climb to sixth placeM J Manohar Rao and Srinivas BhogleThe Rediff test cricket ratings remain unchanged after the India-West Indies five-test series. India (39.44) stay seventh, West Indies (34.74) stay eighth. Things could have been so different! If India's fragile batting tail had survived even 15 minutes more, the fifth test would have been drawn and India's RBI would have gone up to 40.68 (1.24 points more! -- since the West Indies have such a wonderful home record in test cricket, even a drawn test against West Indies in West Indies fetches valuable points).
The current (as on June 3, 2002) home-away point tally of test playing teams is shown, below, in Table A.
The corresponding (unchanged) ranking table, Table F, appears below.
India must now look ahead to the four-test series against England in England. A series win here, or even a drawn series, would be very useful. Table G, below, looks at all the possible scenarios in the India-England series.
Table G does not take into account the outcome of the unfinished England-Sri Lanka series but, generally speaking, it seems probable that India will stay seventh, and England third. There are some scenarios, e.g. India win 3-0 or 4-0, where India can climb to the fifth or even the third position, but these appear practically impossible. So it does look as though the only way that India can do better than seventh, is if Sri Lanka play some horrible test cricket henceforth in the ongoing series against England. As we write this, Sri Lanka have just lost the second test at Edgbaston, and look extremely unlikely to bounce back with a win in the third and final test. So only the two scenarios listed below must be considered likely (see Table H).
Looking at Tables G and H, we note that if England beat Sri Lanka 1-0, then India must draw its forthcoming series against England to climb to the sixth place (40.67 > 40.53). If England beat Sri Lanka 2-0 (i.e. win both the second and third tests), then India will only need three draws out of four, or one win and one draw, to gain the sixth place (39.67 > 39.31).
M J Manohar Rao is professor and director, Department of Economics,
University of Mumbai, Mumbai; Srinivas Bhogle is scientist and head,
Information Management Division, National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore.
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