Suryakumar rises to No. 2 in T20I batting rankings, within two points of top-ranked Babar

Suryakumar Yadav is just 20 T20I innings old, but he has already done enough to get to within striking distance of Babar Azam at the top of the ICC T20I rankings for batters. Suryakumar's latest big show - a match-winning 76 from 44 balls in the third T20I against West Indies in Basseterre on Tuesday - has taken him up to No. 2. And he is just two rating points behind Babar's 818 at this stage, with two T20Is still to play in the series.

He started slowly in the ongoing series against West Indies, in the unfamiliar role of opening batter alongside captain Rohit Sharma, scoring a 16-ball 24 and a six-ball 11. But he came to the party in the third game, playing the leading role as India breezed past West Indies' 164 for 5 with an over in hand. That took him up from No. 4 to No. 2, past Mohammad Rizwan and Aiden Markram, who are now at Nos. 3 and 4 respectively. Dawid Malan is at No. 5.

Suryakumar made his India debut just last year, and has scored 648 T20I runs so far at an average of 38.11 and strike rate of 175.60. His big jump in the rankings came last month, when he scored his first T20I century, 117 against England at Trent Bridge. That innings pushed Suryakumar up a remarkable 44 spots to No. 5 on the table.

Babar, meanwhile, is the only batter in the top three in all international formats at the moment: No. 1 in ODIs and T20Is, and No. 3 in Tests. That might not change immediately, but he might end up losing the top spot in T20Is to Suryakumar, with two games left for India to play in the West Indies, and with Pakistan's next T20I fixture only at the Asia Cup at the end of August, where they start against India.

At the end of three T20Is in the series, which India are leading 2-1, Akeal Hosein has moved up three spots to No. 6 among the bowlers following returns of 1 for 14, 1 for 22 and 1 for 28.

South Africa were in England playing T20Is in late July too, and Reeza Hendricks' sequence of 57, 53 and 70, which helped the visitors take the series 2-1, has given him a gain of 16 place to No. 15. There was a remarkable rise for newbie Tristan Stubbs too, as his 72, 15 not out and 8 got him zooming up the table an incredible 1404 spots, to 126th.

Tabraiz Shamsi had an excellent time of it in England too, returning 3 for 27 and 5 for 24 in the second and third T20Is. He moved up from No. 3 to No. 2 among the bowlers, displacing Rashid Khan.

Away from the Full-Members spotlight, France's Gustav McKeon has been making waves, across in the ICC's T20 World Cup 2024 Europe Sub-Regional Qualifiers, where he has so far hit 76 against Czech Republic, 109 against Switzerland, 101 against Norway, 87 against Estonia, and 4 against Guernsey, in sequence. He moved up 706 spots as a result, up to 134th. On the allrounders' table, Markram rose four spots to joint-seventh with Oman's Zeeshan Maqsood, Sikandar Raza went up eight spots to 11th, and Hardik Pandya rose nine spots to No. 13.

The second Test in Galle between Sri Lanka and Pakistan ended on July 28, with Sri Lanka sealing a 246-run win to square the two-Test series. Prabath Jayasuriya, who returned 3 for 80 and 5 for 117 in that Test, gained 11 places to get to No. 33, and his partner in crime, Ramesh Mendis, moved up 19 places to No. 31 after picking up 5 for 47 and 4 for 101. Dinesh Chandimal's 80 and 21 with the bat took him up two spots to 16th among Test batters.

Rohit, meanwhile, has dropped a spot to ninth on the Test batter rankings, while Jasprit Bumrah rose a place to equal third on the list for bowlers.