Pakistan’s left-arm spinner Noman Ali has leapt four places to second in the ICC men’s Test bowling rankings, rewarded for the ten wickets he prised out of South Africa on a turning Lahore surface last week. The haul – six in the first innings, four in the second – pushes his rating to 853 points, the highest of a career that has gathered pace late but is doing so rather noisily now.
Kagiso Rabada, briefly the man immediately behind R. Ashwin, drops three rungs to fifth after managing just two wickets in the same match. South Africa’s selection tweak did Marco Jansen few favours either; the tall left-armer slipped outside the top ten having been left out of the XI altogether.
Pakistan enjoyed other ranking nudges. Shaheen Shah Afridi’s second-innings burst of 4 for 33, decisive in a 93-run victory, shunted him up to 19th. Ryan Rickelton’s hard-earned 71, South Africa’s lone score of note, edges the left-hander into the top fifty batters for the first time.
White-ball tables also shuffled. In Perth, Josh Hazlewood’s new-ball accuracy under dark clouds helped Australia past India; six ODI ranking spots duly gained, Hazlewood is now tenth. Mitchell Starc’s two late wickets in that same match lift him four places to 21st.
Further south, Adil Rashid’s clever 4 for 32 on a skiddy Christchurch pitch carried England past New Zealand and nudged the Yorkshire leg-spinner up three places to third among T20I bowlers. A reminder, if one were needed, that wrist-spin remains a currency every captain craves.
ICC will publish full tables later today; the early headlines, though, belong to Noman Ali, a 37-year-old who keeps finding new ceilings.
