Gill, Siraj lead big Indian splash at the top of ICC ODI rankings

Shubman Gill has claimed the top spot in the men's ODI batting rankings, going past Babar Azam on the table. An Indian is at the top among ODI bowlers too, with Mohammed Siraj moving up two spots and displacing Shaheen Shah Afridi from the perch.

The top of the bowling table, in fact, has a very Indian look to it, with Kuldeep Yadav now in the top five, and Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami in the top ten as well, while Virat Kohli, after two unbeaten centuries and four half-centuries at the World Cup, has moved up three spots to No. 4 among the batters, just one rating point behind Quinton de Kock, the leading run-scorer at the World Cup right now.

Gill has had a stellar year in ODI cricket, tallying 1449 runs so far from 26 matches, in which he has hit four centuries including a double-century. His average is a stunning 63.00 for the year, as against an overall career average of 61.02. He started slow at the World Cup after being out at the start of the competition following a bout of dengue, but has 219 runs in six innings, including fifties against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Babar hasn't had a bad World Cup himself with four half-centuries in eight innings, but the gap between him and the rising Gill was so slim that he had to do more to hold on to the spot he had owned for more than two years.

From India's point of view, Gill has become the fourth player from the country to be the top ODI batter in the ICC rankings, after Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni and Kohli.

The best individual batting performance of the World Cup so far, meanwhile, came on Tuesday night in Mumbai when Glenn Maxwell put in a superhuman show to single-handedly take Australia past Afghanistan and into the World Cup semi-finals. That unbeaten double-century helped him move up two spots to sixth, while the game's other centurion, Ibrahim Zadran, is up six spots to 12th following an impressive World Cup campaign. Fakhar Zaman, another batter who has played a big role in his team's fortunes, is just outside the top ten for batters, at No. 11, up three spots.

On the whole, the rankings reflect India's dominance at the World Cup so far where they have won eight out of eight league-stage matches so far, all by significant margins. Kohli (No. 2 behind de Kock) and Rohit Sharma (No. 5) have been their most prolific batters so far, but it's their bowling that has been truly blockbuster. None of them are in the top-three in the wicket-takers' list, but Shami (16 wickets in four games), Bumrah (15 in eight), Ravindra Jadeja (14 in eight), Kuldeep (12 in eight) and Siraj (ten in eight) have performed as a pack, and in their last three games, India have bowled out England for 129, Sri Lanka for 55, and South Africa for 83.

Siraj, following 3 for 16 and 1 for 11 against Sri Lanka and South Africa respectively earlier in the week, has moved up from third to first. Afridi, No. 1 the previous week, is now down to fifth, with spinners Keshav Maharaj and Adam Zampa, the second-highest wicket-taker at the World Cup currently, going up to No. 2 and No. 3.

As for the Indians, Kuldeep is up three places to fourth, Bumrah is up three spots to eighth, and Shami is up seven places to tenth.

Of the other top wicket-takers at the World Cup at this point, Dilshan Madushanka has moved up 31 spots to No. 45, and Marco Jansen has gone up nine positions to joint 24th.