Gautam Gambhir has outpaced all Indian Test cricketers to emerge the highest placed Indian batsman in latest ICC test cricket rankings and the slew of cricketers he ran past to make it to the top include India’s batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar. While, Gambhir emerges as the fourth best Test player in international cricket according to the latest rankings, Sachin makes it to number 14 only. The other Indian batsmen to feature in ICC’s top twenty list include VVS Laxman (16th) and Virender Sehwag (20th). On the bowling side, the only Indian bowler, who could make his way to top ten, is Harbhajan Singh, who is placed sixth in the ranking issued yesterday.

Cut to One Day international cricket arena and there too you will find a few ups and downs. While the Aussie Michael Clarke has got his reward for bringing his team a 3-2 series win over Pakistan with a 9-place jump to settle at the 11th, for all-rounder Symonds, his come back series did not prove fruitful dragging him down 3 places in the ranking to place him at number 23. If Clarke, as the acting captain of the team has done a wonderful job in the absence of Ponting, so has Shane Watson. With the total cricket score of 271, including 116 not out in the last match of the series, under his belt, the 27-year-old Aussie took a steep flight to whiz past 27 places to finish at 46th spot. Other two major cricketers from Aussie camp to suffer drops in the ranking are Michael Hussey and Ponting. Since a player loses one per cent of his rating for missing every match and both of them gave the entire series a miss, both of them slipped down three places each and are now in 3rd and 18th positions, respectively.

In the Pakistan camp, Kamran Akmal and Misbah-ul-Haq came out to be the only batsmen to get a jump to finish at 47th and 30th spot. Windies batsmen, Chris Gayle and Shivnarine Chanderpaul got the advantage out of Hussey’s slip and have raised one place each to second and third.

In the bowling side, however, Pakistan has some reason to rejoice as Shahid Afridi with 10 wickets in the series, including a career-best cricket score of 6-38 in the series under his belt has made it to the top 10. At present, it is Sri Lanka’s Nuwan Kulasekara who heads the ICC bowlers table with Kyle Mills of New Zealand in number 2 and Muttiah Muralidharan of Sri Lanka in third.

As it comes to the team ranking, India currently sits at the third place in the Test Championship table with just two points away from the number 2- South Africa. England, which is currently placed sixth on the table, can gain two points jump in the table if it can manage wins both the matches of its upcoming two-Test cricket series against West Indies.

Regarding ODIs, with 124 points, Australia is just two points away from the topper-South Africa. India is again in the third position with two points behind Australia. New Zealand, Pakistan and England are currently on the fourth, fifth and sixth positions respectively.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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