See I think it should, and a good rankings system might find a way to punish teams for not playing enough Test series eg. what if the Test ranking system simply tallied the number of series wins against each team, home and away, for the last 5 years. There would be 18 points up for grabs (vs the 9 teams, home and away), and if you hadn't toured Bangladesh in the last 5 years, you were giving up your chance at a point.
Something like this:
Test Cricket League | The common-sense Test cricket rankings but with Home and Away series included, and very old series (5-6 years or older) dropped off to make teams tour again and not rest on old points gained.
It's odd that you argue the rankings don't take into account dynasty change and recent trends, but then you have no problem including old results in there.
Ha i like that common sense ranking link. But yea if we are going to have a cut off point it should at the end of the cycle when each teams plays each other home/away - which should be no longer than 4 years. Then you start the process/points tabulations from scratch.
Firstly, how could the rankings know that a dynasty has ended? It's a machine. It is not the job of the rankings to identify dynasties beginning or ending. You'd need to write a new 'dynasty' rank identifier algorithim. You're arguing a different thing, about who has been UNDISPUTED
#1 team in world cricket. That doesn't happen so often, and a computer program is going to find it hard to identify that exact moment. That's where your logical cricket fans can come in a say, look WI is no longer undisputed world champs after they lost at home to Aus in 1995. You can ENHANCE the rankings/facts with good discussions and observations. Utimately I think the rankings provide good discussion fodder.
Secondly, why should Australia have dropped from
#1 ? They clearly weren't as good as golden era Australia, but England barely beat Aus in 2009, SA lost to Aus at home in 2009, India couldn't beat Aus in Aus on the 2007/08 tour. No convincing argument was made that any of those teams were clearly better than new-gen Australia, and surely the good work Australia had done over the previous 5 years should have kept them up the top until someone was obviously better. They were a weaker
#1 , but until someone overtakes you, you are still
#1 . They can't be
#1 .5
That "good discussion" you mentioned used to happen from 1948-2002 before ranking system became official . I showed you this before & you haven't particularly answered why that process needed to be changed.
Those dynasty etc factors are very important to judging teams & i don't expect any ranking system to ever have any formal to properly work that out - thus it will always cause confusion.
For example lets look at how ENG got to # 1 incorrectly:
quote said:
English cricket after the Moores/Pietersen saga between West Indies 2009 - Pakistan 2010 where the embryonic stages of the Strauss/Flower partnership and development. No one in their right mind was ranking or speaking of England as anything close to best team in the world then and rightly so because they had alot players who did not convince the world they good all-round players.
The 2010/11 Ashes was the potential starting point of this teams greatness.
Players for ENG like Anderson, Tremlett, Cook, Bell, Bresnan came of age in Ashes 2010/11. The faulty ICC ranking system which judges form of the a short two year period, does not recongize this and its has incorrectly made a correlation with ENG of between of WI 09 - PAK 2010 to ENG between AUS 2010/11 - IND 2011. Those are two completely different ENG teams that one cannot compare.
This new ENG team had not won enough series to reach that accolade when they beat india 4-0 last year , since they were only 8 months into their potential dynasty. ENG would never have viewed that IND 2011 series as one where they could become # 1, if the ICC didn't tell them they could.
So when they were whitewashed Pakistan 2012, people began to question their # 1 ranking, when in fact they never were never # 1.
Also lets look at how AUS were on the verge of becoming # 1 again according to the rankings if they had beaten S Africa in the Perth test in 2012:
quote said:
Now we both are AUS fans so i don't need to explain to you the crap cricket the team has been playing since 2009 in tests. How is it then that a S Africa team who have only lost 1 series 2006 entered that Perth test vs AUS on the verge of being dethroned by that 2012 AUS team?
If that had happened, Dave Richardson would have been presenting Michael Clarke with a mace at the end of that series & then AUS would have gone to India lost 4-0 & the Ashes 3-0 as the so called "# 1 team". Your an intelligent bloke & I'm sure you can see why this would have been ridiculous.
So we must thank god S Africa brought their A game to that Perth test.
Secondly I am not talking about "undisputed" # 1 teams like WI 76-95 or AUS 95-2007, people always misinterpret what is meant by this
We all know those WI & AUS teams were the two most dominant # 1 teams in test history, they wiped the floor with everyone home & away. But they have been other teams in test history who were # 1 - who were less dominant:
ENG 1951-1958 - did not loose a test series for 7 years. But they drew a few series too & were not super dominant. They just simply won more home/away series than their opponents & it was obviously they were the best.
S Africa from 2006 to 2013 (to date) - have only lost 1 test series (vs AUS home 2009) since the end AUS dominant era of. They haven't been super dominant yet (although they could probably take it to another level in the coming years) - they have drawn a few series in India, not yet won in SRI (although this is mainly due to the poor FTP fixtures) & not yet beaten AUS @ home strangely.
Benaud's AUS from 58-63, Windies 64-69, Chappell's AUS from 72-76, Illingworth's England from 69-973 are other examples of less dominant # 1's. So let's get the distinction be clear.
With regards to AUS post 2006-07, its similar to Windies post 91 series in England. Nobody every says & correctly AUS glory days were from 95-2009 - so why should that human ranking system prolong their # 1 tag from 2 more years?
Historians end the windies dominant era at the of 91, although they did not loose a test series until 95 - the same with AUS with regards to that 2008/09 home loss to S Africa.
Between 91-94 & 2007-2009, those post dominant era teams went back into the pack during these periods & a jostling for the # 1 occurred between a few teams. Its only when AUS beat Windies in 95 or S Africa beat AUS in 2008 - that a # 1 of some form was legitimately formed again.
Even if the we get a perfect situation where teams plays each other in a structured manner, home/away for 4 years & get awarded points for series wins/draws - the ranking might still throw up a few anomalies. This is why cricket ranking system should not be treated as the total gospel truth about the state of world cricket - but rather as vague guide instead.
And for reasons already stated in this thread, this shows why the world test championship had to be implemented.
). Should SA have overtaken Aus as soon as Warne/McGrath retired? (And how to explain this to fans? ie. your team has just won 5-0, but we think your dynasty has ended - you are now #2 , congrats.) Was it the next year when Hayden and Gilchrist retired? Did SA take over #1 when they won in Aus in 2008/09? And did Aus then automatically take back that #1 2 months later when they won in SA? 
Well done PCB, Shabash shabash (Moin Khan voice)
