The ICC has finally come up with a detailed explanation for India's unexpected drop to eighth place in the one-day international ratings, despite their achievement in reaching the World Cup final in South Africa earlier this year.
In a teleconference, held exclusively for the Indian media, David Kendix, the man behind the new ratings, explained that India had, on average, played against relatively weak teams over the last two years - the average opponent rating for India was 94, the lowest among all teams. This meant that, despite winning a higher percentage of matches than most other teams, India found themselves among the bottom-rungers.
As the table below indicates, England's average opponent rating of 107 was the highest for any team over the last two years, while India was the only team among the top eight with a sub-100 figure. That explained England's high rank despite a win-percentage of just 49.
What do these average opponent ratings indicate? It means that if England win 50% of their matches, their rating will be 107 - since that's the average rating of their opponents - while India will only have a rating of 94 if they win half their total ODIs. This implies that to match England's rating, India would need to win 13% more matches than England.
Average rating of the opponents for the top eight teams
Rating Avg Opp. Rating Win %
Australia 134 105 73.08
South Africa 118 103 62.50
England 107 107 48.93
West Indies 106 103 50.00
New Zealand 106 105 44.90
Sri Lanka 105 104 49.25
Pakistan 105 101 56.90
India 104 94 56.25
It's obvious that India paid the price for playing 14 matches against Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Kenya, and just two against Australia in the last two years. However, a look at the schedule over the next few months suggests that the opponent rating index for India could shoot up dramatically: India play Australia at least seven times in two ODI triangular series. If India and Australia contest the finals of both those tournaments - with New Zealand and Zimbabwe being the third teams in the two events, that's a distinct possibility - that figure could go up to 10 or 11. The average opponent rating for India will then surely go up; if they notch up a few wins, their rating will skyrocket as well.
Meanwhile, Dave Richardson, the ICC's general manager for cricket, and Brendan McClements, general manager (corporate affairs), insisted that no changes were planned for the rating system. According to the current method, the results of one year's matches will be removed on August 1 each year. Arguing against a system which takes only the last two year's results at any given point of time - instead of having August 1 as a cut-off date annually - McClements said: "The whole process of monitoring the table and predicting what will happen becomes more difficult. No-one could look at the table and say `if we win our next two matches, this is what will happen'.
"The other point is, a team could win a very good match, and it doesn't help your rating as you might drop at exactly the same time, a good result from two years earlier [which is now removed]." Currently, matches which are held after August will get a weightage of one, while the matches earlier, including the NatWest Series games, get only two-third weightage.
Richardson explained the logic behind choosing August 1 as the changeover date. "It's a period where there are likely to be few one-day matches being played around the world. We didn't want to get into a situation where one game in a series counts for more than another."
McClements was emphatic in stating that there was no rethink about according greater weightage to more important matches. McClements said: "It was a strong resolve from all countries that each game be treated equally. There is danger in trying to treat different games in different ways, and we felt it'd be far more effective if each game was treated in the same way."
It was creditable that the ICC at least attempted to explain a method that no-one seems to be able to understand, but ultimately, it was unlikely to move too many people in favour of the method.
? Wisden CricInfo Ltd
