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Tendulkar, Donald top world rankings

Prem Panicker

Sanjay Manjrekar had dropped in at our office a couple of days ago, to discuss an upcoming project he is working on for Rediff.

At one stage, the conversation turned to world rankings and I found, for the umpteenth time, that while the media, and the world, swears by those rankings that are put out by Wisden, the players themselves seem to regard Coopers & Lybrand as the ultimate in rankings.

Personally, I've found this whole numbers game pretty silly, placing as it does more of a premium on quantity (of runs and/or wickets) than on how and when they were accumulated, and against who. I mean, would you rank say a Steve Waugh, much as you might admire his tenacity and grit, above brother Mark as a batsman? Or Angus Fraser over say Shaun Pollock?

But if you must rank players, then I prefer the Coopers & Lybrand method, for two reasons.

First up, the C&L rankings are weighted. For match conditions and nature of opposition, to start with. Thus, a mammoth score against sub-standard bowling on a feather bed rates less than a fighting, sub-century score against a superb bowling attack on a killer track -- and that is how it should be.

Further, the averages are also weighted for factors such as improvement. Thus, if a player overall, in his career, is averaging say 40, but over the last year or two has been averaging 50+, that fact -- which, other conditions being equal -- denotes improvement, is taken note of and factored in when the points are being calculated.

Again, when it comes to bowlers, wickets taken are adjusted keeping in mind the quality of batsmen dismissed -- thus, getting rid of a number 11 doesn't count on the same scale as getting rid of a number one bat.

There is one other reason why I, personally, prefer C&L to the Wisden rankings. And that is because the former takes into account an entire career - not merely the last two years, as Wisden does. I mean, when I look at Wisden and find Salim Malik ranked higher than the likes of Mark Waugh, Mohammad Azharuddin and Saeed Anwar, to name just three. C&L ranks Malik at 29 -- which puts him ahead of Ricky Ponting for one, which doesn't seem too right either, but is still streets ahead of the ridiculously high rating of nine, which Wisden gives him.

Even more silly, to my mind, is that Wisden's latest rankings actually have Malik going up the ladder -- from number 12 last month, to number 9!

The reason why C&L seems to be better in this regard is because it docks a player 1% of his total points for every Test missed -- so if you don't play, you not only don't earn points, you lose a percentage of the the ones you have, which makes sense to me.

Despite its obvious advantages over the competition, the latest C&L rankings, read carefully, provides lots of scope for argument, dissent even. Which leads me to wonder if there is a perfect system for these things. If so, which? And why? Any ideas, guys?

Meanwhile, back to the latest rankings, and the big news is that Allan Donald, who recently went past the 200-wickets mark, has become the first South African player to top the world rankings. And given that Shaun Pollock, Donald's partner in crime, has climbed 18 places to grab the 4th slot, it looks like the Proteas are mounting a major assault on the ratings about now -- and with the tour of England about to begin, my bet is Donald will hold, while Pollock will up his stock even further, in the next few weeks.

Surprisingly -- given their recent results -- South Africa isn't doing quite as well in the batting department, Kirsten being their highest entry at number 9 (which is itself a jump of 23 places) while Cronje follows him at number 13 (up nine). While Darryl Cullinan, who critics rate as their best batsman, is actually slipping in the rankings, weighing in at 18 which is a slide of eight places.

On the batting front, the big news is Sachin Tendulkar -- up again to number one, a move up by two places, and establishing a clear lead over number two, Brian Lara, of 68 points.

Interestingly, the latest Wisden rankings also puts Tendulkar at the top, with Sidhu, Aravinda D'Silva, Sanath Jayasuriya, Azhar Mahmood, Steve Waugh, Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly, Salim Malik and Alec Stewart being numbers 2-10; and Lara coming in at number 25!

Interestingly, this time last year, Lara was still number two on C&L -- behind Steve Waugh. At that point, Tendulkar weighed in at number 8, with 720 points -- a good 165 below Waugh senior.

Here, for both edification and amusement, are the latest from C&L. Enjoy!

Complete world rankings - batsmen

Complete world rankings - bowlers