India’s veteran batters Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma continue to struggle with their respective forms in Test cricket. In the ongoing five-match Test series against Australia, Virat has scored 167 runs across four matches at an average of 27.83. He has scored only one century while in his other six innings he failed to even score a fifty. The case is even poorer with Rohit, who joined the team from the second game and failed to make any impact since then. Rohit has scored only 31 runs across five innings at an average of 6.2. Only once has Rohit registered the double-digit score in the series.
Of late, the Indian duo has suffered another low. Owing to their poor performance in the fourth Test vs Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, both Kohli and Rohit have slipped three and five places, respectively, in the latest ICC batting rankings for the format.
Kohli now holds the 24th spot, while Rohit is at the 40th position.
India’s pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah on Wednesday bettered spin stalwart Ravichandran Ashwin’s all-time rating-point record by an Indian in the latest ICC rankings when he touched the 907-point mark.
Ashwin’s highest rating was 904, achieved in December 2016.
The 907 ranking points also placed Bumrah as joint-17th in the all-time list with Derek Underwood of England.
Ahead of the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne last week, Bumrah had equalled the record (904) held by Ashwin in the ranking for bowlers.
However, another superb performance at the MCG, where he got nine wickets, albeit in a losing cause, helped him consolidate his lead as the No. 1 Test bowler in the recent update.
Australia skipper Pat Cummins earned 15 rating points following his six wickets at MCG to jump a place to No. 3.
He also secured a third place in the Test all-rounder rankings after he notched up 90 vital runs across two innings during Australia’s 184-run win in the fourth Test.
Opener Yashasvi Jaiswal’s 82-run first-innings knock in the Boxing Day Test saw him jump a spot to a career-best fourth with 854 rating points, while Nitish Kumar Reddy’s maiden Test century leapfrogged him 20 places to 53rd in the Test batting rankings.
(With PTI Inputs)
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