Rankings in Cricket

When India lost a test match few months back, the statement from someone,

India does not deserve to be Number 1.

When Australia lost continuously three test matches and dropped to fifth position, the statement from an Australian cricketer,

Australia does not deserve to be in Number 5. We deserve to be at a better rank. The ranking formula is considering very old matches also.

I cannot understand these people. ICC came up with the ranking formula for the teams and individual team members by considering the matches in the last few months. It takes many things into consideration, and comes up with one number, which represents how they compare with others. If the team is continuously losing few matches and is still at number one position, it means, the team won so many matches with many countries, and these defeats are negligible when compared to the wins they had. The ranking formula takes care of all these things.

When they introduced the ranking, nobody objected to it. But, once they dropped in the ranking, if they give statements like Australia does not deserve to be in number 5, what are they trying to say? Do they want to hard code the formula that, Australia is always number 1, or do they want to change the formulas after every match in such a way that, Australia is always in number 1 position?

If anyone thinks that, the formula is not actually representing the team's rank, then they should suggest the changes in the formula. There is no use of criticizing that, the particular team does not deserve to be in that rank.

Australians do not have right to suggest now. They should have suggested when they were in number 1 position for many years. If the suggestions of the Australian cricketer had been implemented many years back, Australia would have lost number one position much before.