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Australia batter Travis Head has overtaken team-mates Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne to grab a career-best second position in the MRF Tyres ICC Men’s Test Player Rankings.
Head’s scores of 39 and 77 in the third match of the ICC World Test Championship series against England at Headingly had taken him to within nine points of Kane Williamson’s 883 rating points even as the batting rankings continued to be volatile at the top with five of the top seven featuring in the ongoing Ashes series, said an ICC press release.
Head’s previous best ranking was third, attained after the ICC World Test Championship Final against India last month, in which he had scored a decisive 163 in the first innings.
Quite a few England batters progressed in the weekly update carried out on Wednesday after a three-wicket victory helped them narrow the gap in the series to 2-1.
Harry Brook moved up to a career-best 12th place after scoring 75 in the second innings, captain Ben Stokes was in the top 20 for the first time since September after scoring 80 in the first innings, and Zak Crawley’s knocks of 33 and 44 lifted him eight places to the 48th position.
In the bowling rankings, Stuart Broad and Mark Wood made notable progress. Broad gained four places to reach sixth position after finishing with five wickets in the match while Wood was up nine places to the 26th position with a career-best 591 rating points with seven wickets, including a five-for in the second innings. Chris Woakes re-entered the rankings in 36th position after taking three wickets each in both innings.
In the MRF Tyres ICC Men’s ODI Player Rankings, Afghanistan batter Ibrahim Zadran gained 11 slots to reach 16th position after contributing 142 runs during a 2-1 series win over Bangladesh while Rahmanullah Gurbaz galloped 37 places to 45th after topping the series aggregate with 173 runs.
