BIRMINGHAM: International Cricket Council (ICC) chief executive Haroon Lorgat praised England’s rise to number one in the Test rankings after their latest thrashing of India on Saturday.
“This achievement is just reward for the hard work from all the players and team management and they no doubt will celebrate being on top of the world,” Lorgat said in a statement.
England had started the series in third position behind South Africa and trailing top ranked India by eight ratings points.
“On behalf of the ICC, I would like to congratulate Andrew Strauss, (England coach) Andy Flower and the whole team for becoming the number-one ranked Test team in the world,” Lorgat said.
Although the ICC table is only eight years old, it also retrospectively ranks Test sides.
On that basis, England were last top of the rankings in February 1979 when the then number-one ranked West Indies lost a six-Test series in India 1-0.
However, the West Indies bounced back 17 months later to beat England by 1-0 in a five-Test series to reclaim the number-one ranking. Prior to this and since the 1950s, England had twice achieved number-one status.
The first occasion was from 1955 to 1959, when teams captained by Len Hutton and Peter May produced a golden era for English cricket and then from 1970 to 1973, a period where England regained the Ashes in Australia under Ray Illingworth in 1970/71.
India’s current period atop the ICC table started when they beat Sri Lanka 2-0 in a three-Test series in December 2009. (PTI)