There are a number of cricket ranking systems around the traps but, for the most part, they're limited to the top teams (Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, Kenya, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, West Indies and Zimbabwe). I find it a little frustrating that fringe nations such as Canada, Hong Kong, Namibia, Netherlands, Scotland, UAE and USA can play in officially sanctioned one-day international cricket matches yet not be recognised in any rankings systems. And to take it a step further, these fringe countries also play limited overs matches against a number of other countries who haven't yet qualified for an official ODI match.
So, after playing around with various different ideas for ratings systems, I have come up with this system. Points are distributed according to the winning margin in a match, not just simply who won or lost, so a team that gets close to beating a higher-ranked team will benefit more than a team that gets hammered. And the amount of points available to be won in any particular match is proportional to the ratings of the teams involved so a team can't get to the top of the rankings without beating other top teams.
Because the result of the game is taken into account, I have decided not to backdate the ratings to the early days of one-day cricket, instead beginning with the 2003 World Cup in South Africa. When the ratings began, teams were allocated an intial ranking, based on their all-time record in recognised one-day internationals or in the ICC Trophy. In September 2006, this was modified so that once a team has played at least five games, its initial rating is modified based on its resaults in those first few games.
The calculations
Before each game, the two teams sacrifice 10% of their rankings into a points pool for that match. The winner of the match gets 20% of the pool with the remaining 80% allocated according to the margin of the result. If the team batting first wins, it gets the following percentage of points:
20%+0.8*Winning team's runs/(Winning team's runs + Losing team's runs)
The losing team gets the remaining percentage.
If the team batting second wins, there is a preliminary calculation:
Revised Winning team's runs = Winning team's runs*Maximum overs available/Overs faced
The revised figure is then used in the first formula instead of the actual winning team's runs.
A team's total runs can also be revised during rain-affected matches. When a team batting second has to chase a revised target, then the team batting first is deemed to have scored one less than the revised target
If you have any more questions, you can probably find the answer on the FAQ page.
If you have any comments about the rankings, send us an email
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