Rankings confusion push Bangladesh to Fake 5th Rank

In what was a rather eventful week of Bangladesh cricket, the cricketing fans entered their workplaces on Monday morning full of joy. And they had a good reason to be. Their team of Bangladeshi stars had just been significantly boosted up in the ODI rankings. However, the story did not end there. Having been pushed up the rankings to the No. 5 slot in the updated list dated for the 1st of May, the hopes of the fans came crashing back down to earth.

At the moment, the Bangladesh side is still at 7th place in the ICC ODI rankings with a rating of 97. The cause of confusion was the statement released by BCB chief Nazmul Hasan Papon. After attending an ICC meeting in Dubai, Papon claimed that they had risen to the fifth spot. He claimed that it was announced at a meeting on Sunday by ICC chief executive Dave Richardson that Bangladesh was on 101 rating points.

“At the ICC meeting yesterday (Sunday), the highlight for us was the ODI rankings,” Nazmul had told reporters. “There it was disclosed that Bangladesh is No. 5. We always hovered around No. 9 or 10, and then we rose to No. 8 and 7. We are just one point above England and Sri Lanka who are in No. 6 and 7 with 100 points.”

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“I saw this ranking before I went to the meeting because they always sent the papers before the meetings,” he said. “I thought they had made a mistake. I thought, ‘It was No. 7, when did they become No. 5?’

“I checked Cricinfo and there too we were No 7. I was a lot of tension seeing the ranking so I was waiting for it to come up on the agenda for the meeting.”

The reason for the careless miscalculation was the fact that the ICC had calculated the rating points based on the results from the last two years. It has been learnt that Bangladesh would have been fifth only if results of the last two years were only taken into account. The ODI rankings are calculated in accordance with a three-year cycle, and so this is not about to come to pass.

The ICC regulations, however, state that results from the 13/14 season and 14/15 season will be weighted at 50% while results from the 15/16 season will be weighted at 100%.

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