ICC Women's Rankings: Australia top both T20I and ODI rankings; India increase lead over England in ODIs

The Australian women’s team lead both the ODI and T20I rankings after the annual updates were released by the ICC on Monday. This is the first annual update in the women’s T20I rankings since its inception in October last year.

The Australian team continued their winning run after their 17th consecutive win in ODIs in the second ODI in Brisbane, although the mentioned match wasn’t been taken into consideration for the rankings.

In the ODI rankings, Australia lead the way with 151 points, followed by India in second spot with 125 points and England in third position with 122 points. India maintained their lead over world champions England and bettered it after a good showing against South Africa recently.

Pakistan are two points behind the West Indies with 77 points while Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Ireland take up the remaining spots.

In the T20Is, World T20 champions, Australia lead the pack with 293 points, followed by England with 279 points. India are languishing at fifth with 252 points, despite boasting the likes of Smrit Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur and Jemimah Rodrigues. Samoa, Tanzania and Kenya take up the last three slots in the T20I table.

🇦🇺 consolidate their lead at the top in both @MRFWorldwide ICC Women's ODI and T20I Team Rankings 🙌 How have the other teams performed? Check out the latest rankings update ⬇️ https://t.co/0uGPG22iOS

— ICC (@ICC) October 7, 2019

The biggest inspiration comes from the Thailand women's cricket team, who are within four points of replacing 10th ranked Ireland. Thailand beat the Australian team’s record of winning 16 consecutive games by winning a staggering 17 matches on the trot, between March 2014 and August 2015.

They have also qualified for the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup to be held in Australia in 2020 after winning 21 of the 25 matches in the last season. The biggest gainers were Denmark and Mexico, who claimed the 40th and 41st position respectively as they racked up eight points each.

The ICC awarded international status to all the ICC members in women’s cricket last season, thereby increasing the number of official T20I matches to 265 as compared to 166 last season. This saw a 60% rise in the number of games played all over the world within a 12-month period.

Also see – World Test Championship Schedule