Daily Times

KARACHI: Pakistan opener Fakhar Zaman has jumped to second spot in the ICC T20I Player Rankings for Batsmen, after his spectacular performance in the recently concluded triangular series in Zimbabwe. He was also declared the player of the series on the back of his superb display throughout the series. Zaman’s sequence of scores in Zimbabwe read 61, 6, 47, 73 and 91 enabled him to move up 44 spots on the table to reach second spot with 842 points. Aaron Finch, the captain of the Australia T20I side, also had a remarkable run during the tournament in Zimbabwe, scoring 68 not out, 172 – a world record in the format – 16, 3 and 47. As these runs came on the back of the 84 he scored in the one-off T20I against England, Finch rose three spots from number four to become the new number one in the batsmen’s list. He played no small role in Australia bouncing back from a spate of losses across formats in recent times, but it was still not enough for his team to win the title.

Interestingly, earlier in the tournament, Finch had also reached a career-high 900 points, and the new number two on the table, Lokesh Rahul, did the same in the first match of three-T20I series in England, getting to 854 points. That was after he had led India to victory in the first game of the series with an unbeaten 101. He dipped from there, but six and 19 in the next two games ensured he was up nine spots since the last update at 812 points.

Injured Babar Azam, Colin Munro and Glenn Maxwell all moved down, occupying the three spots below Finch, Zaman and Rahul, while further down on the list, there were more such interesting changes. D’Arcy Short, Finch’s opening partner, had an up-and-down run in Zimbabwe, but scores of 46 and 76 – in the final – during the course of the tournament helped him jump 18 places to number 10. It’s a career-best number for him, his first time in the Top 10, with 690 points, also a career high. Among the bowlers, legspinners Rashid Khan and Shadab Khan retained the top two positions but there were movements down the table. Andrew Tye rose 41 places to seventh spot and Adil Rashid moved up four places to ninth.

Among others ending the England v India series with career-best points were Jason Roy (up 19 spots to number15 with 641 points) and Jos Buttler (up nine spots to number 17 with 614 points), but perhaps the most breath-taking rise has been that of Zimbabwe opener Solomon Mire. Mire started the triangular series with a big reputation but not much in terms of numbers in T20I cricket, but almost single-handedly kept Zimbabwe hoping for a spot in the final with two magnificent innings. He started slowly with 27 and 28 in the first two games but then slammed 94 – Zimbabwe’s best in the format – and 63 in the last two to rise an incredible 202 places in the rankings. He ended with a career-best 581 points and the 25th place on the table.

Published in Daily Times, July 10^th 2018.