ICC Test Rankings | Jasprit Bumrah surges back into top ten; Kohli 25 points behind top-ranked Smith

India headed into the Test series with a 3-0 ODI loss against New Zealand. Immediately, they were put under the pump in the first Test in Wellington, when the Trent Boult and Tim Southee-led Kiwi pace attack took the sting out of India’s batting unit. For the first time, Kohli found himself falling down the pecking order after an aggregate of 17 runs. Meanwhile, Jasprit Bumrah, too, struggled to find any sort of momentum, picking up only three wickets in the game. Following that loss, both Bumrah and Kohli found themselves down the order, with Bumrah being pushed out of the top ten rankings for Test bowlers for the first time. 

However, Bumrah made a comeback in the second Test with an impressive display against the hosts, picking up three wickets in the first innings before adding two more to his tally in the second. This has put the 26-year-old Ahmedabad pacer back into the top ten rankings, at seventh ahead of England’s James Anderson, New Zealand’s Trent Boult and Australia’s Josh Hazlewood. The hosts’ pacer Tim Southee pushed his way up the order, picking up fifer in the Test to fourth on the rankings just ahead of South Africa’s Kagiso Rabada.  

On the batting front, Kohli’s twin failure in the series has increased the gap between him and the Australian batsman Smith at the top of the batsmen’s rankings. The Australian became the only batsmen to have 900+ points in the rankings, with Kohli second best at 886. However, Cheteshwar Pujara’s gritty knock was duly acknowledged, moving two positions from ninth to seventh on the table. The Kiwi skipper Kane Williamson slipped a position, dropping down to fourth, with Australia’s Marnus Labuschagne moving up the ladder.