Five Australian batsmen in top 11 of LG ICC Player Rankings for ODIs

With five batsmen in the top 11 places of the LG ICC Player Rankings for ODI batsmen, Australia is the clear favourite to dominate the tri-series with England and New Zealand that starts on Friday in Melbourne.

Michael Hussey, Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds, Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke are all in fine form at present and with the ICC Cricket World Cup just two months away, they will be keen to make sure that continues as they begin the countdown to the big one in the West Indies.

In contrast, England has just one player, Kevin Pietersen, in the top 20 and New Zealand can only manage one, captain Stephen Fleming, in the top 25 (and only if you take out the retired Damien Martyn).

And with England ranked eighth in the LG ICC ODI Championship it is perhaps no surprise that it does not have a single bowler in the top 20 of the LG ICC Player Rankings for ODI bowlers.

Indeed, if you take out Steve Harmison, who has retired from one-day international cricket, Andrew Flintoff is its highest ranked bowler, in 25th place.

On the bowling front, things are a little more encouraging for New Zealand. Daniel Vettori has just moved into the top five of the LG ICC Player Rankings for ODI bowlers and has just reached his highest ever rating in the LG ICC Player Rankings for ODI all-rounders.

The 27-year-old left-arm spinner has now been a constant fixture in the top ten of the ODI bowling list for two years.

New Zealand can draw plenty of encouragement from the fact that it, like Australia, has four bowlers ranked higher than England's best - Vettori, Shane Bond, Kyle Mills and Jacob Oram, although the latter two are absent with injuries at the start of the series.

Some consolation for England is that Flintoff is the highest ranked all-rounder of the three countries as he sits in fourth position in LG ICC Player Rankings for ODI all-rounders, behind South Africa's Shaun Pollock, Chris Gayle of the West Indies and Sri Lanka's Sanath Jayasuriya.

Pollock is in the form of his life and is currently enjoying his highest ever rating in both the bowler and all-rounder categories of the LG ICC ODI Player Rankings.

Meanwhile, South Africa, currently five rating points off top spot, could move above Australia at the top of the LG ICC ODI Championship before the start of the ICC Cricket World Cup if it has a good series against Pakistan and Ricky Ponting's men fail to fire.

India can move past Sri Lanka into fifth place in the LG ICC ODI Championship if it beats the West Indies 3-0 or 4-0 in their upcoming series - a preview of that encounter, and of South Africa's ODI series with Pakistan, will follow in due course.

For more information, including the tri-series fixtures, go to