Pakistan stays atop of the T20I ranking after ICC corrects its blunder

Australia clinched the Trans-Tasman T20I series title earlier today when they won the finals against New Zealand. They found themselves ahead of the DLS par score by 19 runs in a rain-affected game. However, they were cruising along well before the rain interruption and looked the favourites to win the game. With the victory in this game, the Australian team was assumed to be the leader of the ICC T20I rankings.

New Zealand only managed to put up a total of 150 on the board in the first innings. The Australian team, with the kind of form it is in never seemed to be troubled to chase this minimal score. The Australians were spotted celebrating hard after the win and reassumption of the No.1 rank.

However, their joy was short-lived as it was later found that the team didn’t climb up to the No.1 rank. The celebrations were subdued after it emerged they had not become the number one team in T20I cricket. Pakistan is still the leader of the T20I ranking and is ahead of Australia by decimal points.

An unexpected blunder from the ICC

According to a calculation provided by an International Cricket Council spokesperson to cricket.com.au last week, Australia would move ahead of leaders Pakistan in the rankings for T20I teams if they won the tri-series undefeated – which they did. They won all the five games that they’ve played including the finals while the other two teams only managed to bag just one win.

However, hours later after the win, ICC was quick to realise its mistake. The ICC acknowledged its ‘clerical’ error after the game and rectified it immediately. The ICC stated that Pakistan is still the leader of the rankings in the shortest format of the game. The Pakistani team is ahead by a very little margin and Australia will be determined to get to the top the next time they play.

Interestingly, the Australian team was seventh in the rankings before the start of the series. It took a commendable performance from them to just up to the second position. The ICC said that when the points were rounded off on Wednesday, Australia was on 125.65 points, just 0.19 points behind Pakistan on 125.84.

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