LG ICC Player Rankings back Strauss's assessment of England's batting strength

The LG ICC Player Rankings for Test batsmen confirm the assessment of England's acting captain Andrew Strauss after his side's draw with the West Indies at Lord's - that the home side has an "exceptionally good stock of batsmen."

England now has four players inside the top 15 batting places in the rankings and no other side can match that, although Australia does have three players - leader Ricky Ponting, fifth-placed Michael Hussey and Matthew Hayden, in sixth position - in the top 10 and a total of five inside the top 20.

England's top-ranked batsman remains Kevin Pietersen, third in the list behind Ponting and Mohammad Yousuf of Pakistan after his seventh Test hundred. However, two of his team-mates are also now knocking on the door of places inside the top 10 - Ian Bell and Paul Collingwood.

Bell is up three places to 14th position and has his best-ever haul of rating points following a first innings 109 not out while Collingwood rises one spot to 13th after his 111 in London.

Strauss is the fourth member of England's leading quartet, although after scores of 33 and 24 he has slipped two places to 15th in the list.

Alastair Cook, another England centurion in the opening Test of the four-match series, is up one position to 22nd while Matthew Prior, who made 126 not out in his debut match, makes his first appearance in the list in 75th spot.

The West Indies, by comparison, has just one player inside the top 20 - former captain Shivnarine Chanderpaul, whose adhesive first innings 74 has seen him climb one place to 19th in the table.

But below him Chris Gayle (25th, up one), Dwayne Bravo (37th, up two), Daren Ganga (48th, up three and with a best-ever haul of rating points) and Denesh Ramdin (up six to joint 57th place and also with more rating points than ever before) are all heading in the right direction.

And West Indies seam and swing bowler Corey Collymore is another player heading upwards, this time in the LG ICC Player Rankings for Test bowlers.

Collymore, who captured four wickets in the drawn Lord's match, is up one place to 10th position and has reached a career-high haul of rating points.

The same is true of England spinner Monty Panesar, whose best Test figures of 6-129 have catapulted him up seven places in that bowling list to 26th position.

England highest-placed player among the bowlers remains Matthew Hoggard but he drops two places to seventh after a wicketless match which was marred by an injury that has ruled him out of the second match of the series that starts at his home ground in Leeds on Friday.

Below Hoggard is another England player under an injury cloud, Andrew Flintoff, in ninth position, while Stephen Harmison, after match-figures of 1-138 at Lord's, is now at his lowest ranking since 2003 (joint 18th) and is in danger of dropping out of the top 20.

Collymore is the West Indies' solitary representative in a top 20 that is headed by Sri Lanka spinner Muttiah Muralidaran, who is well clear of the South Africa duo of Shaun Pollock and Makhaya Ntini.

Below that trio comes India's highest-ranked Test bowler in the LG ICC Player Rankings, spinner Anil Kumble, but he has slipped one place after the drawn first Test against Bangladesh in Chittagong in which he was unable to bowl a ball after falling ill with a virus during the match.

India's two batting centurions in that rain-marred match, Saurav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar, both remain outside the top 20 batting places, Tendulkar unchanged in 21st position and Ganguly, up two places to joint 33rd spot.

Captain Rahul Dravid remains India's only batsman inside that top 20, unchanged in eighth position.

Wasim Jaffer, who made a pair of ducks in Chittagong, drops six places to joint 54th place but is still ahead of Mahendra Singh Dhoni (60th, up four) and Yuvraj Singh (joint 61st, down four).

The highest-placed Bangladesh batsman is captain Habibul Bashar, in 30th place, while Rajin Saleh is up four spots to 53rd with his best-ever haul of rating points.

And man-of-the-match Mashrafe Mortaza, who captured five wickets in the Test, is up two places to 35th in the bowling list although he is still not the top-ranked Bangladesh bowler.

That honour goes to left-arm spinner Mohammad Rafique, up one spot to 27th position.

The order of players in the LG ICC Player Rankings for Test all-rounders remains unchanged with South Africa's Jacques Kallis still clear of Flintoff.

The fact India, despite its positive intent, failed to win the Chittagong Test, will affect its rating in the LG ICC Test Championship table when that table is updated at the end of the next match in Mirpir.

That is because the table is weighted so that a side gets more credit for performing well against sides ranked above it in the list; and with India so far ahead of Bangladesh (105 rating points) it means the touring side was expected to win the series comfortably.

The fact it cannot now win both matches will count against Dravid's side but the reverse of that is that even a 1-0 series loss for Bangladesh will see its rating rise, albeit from two to three points, still 25 points short of ninth-placed Zimbabwe.

The LG ICC Test Championship table is headed by Australia, 21 points clear of England, with Pakistan third and India in fourth position.

The schedule for the remaining matches in the England - West Indies series is as follows:

25 - 29 May - Second Test, Leeds
7 - 11 June - Third Test, Manchester
15 - 19 June - Fourth Test, Chester-le-Street

The schedule for the remaining match in the Bangladesh - India series is as follows:

25 - 29 May - Second Test, Mirpur (Dhaka)