Sehwag innings gains points but not places in LG ICC Player Rankings after batsman-friendly Test

Virender Sehwag gained 52 rating points for his innings of 254 against Pakistan but it was not enough to lift him up the LG ICC Player Rankings.

Sehwag, together with the five other centurions in the Lahore Test, would ordinarily have surged up the list after an innings of that scale against an attack including two players - Shoaib Akhtar and Danish Kaneria - from among the world's top 20.

But the relatively easy conditions for run-scoring - in five days just eight wickets fell while 1089 runs were scored - meant he has to be content with holding his position at seventh in the list.

India's other centurion, captain Rahul Dravid, gained 22 rating points thanks to his first hundred in charge of the Test team but with the gap between him and the players immediately above him a relatively small one, he has eased up two places to joint fourth.

Dravid has leapfrogged his Pakistan counterpart Inzamam-ul-Haq - one of the few batting failures in the Test after he scored a single - and is now level with Australia's Matthew Hayden.

For Pakistan, both Mohammad Yousuf and Younis Khan now have their best-ever hauls of rating points after both of them scored big hundreds in Lahore.

Yousuf has moved up two places to eighth in the rankings after his 173 while Younis, who made 199, eases up one place to tenth. It means that, with Inzamam in sixth place, Pakistan have three players in the top ten of the LG ICC Player Rankings for batsmen.

Further down the list, Shahid Afridi's blitzkrieg batting on day two has moved him up five places to joint 39th while Kamran Akmal, whose innings was the fastest hundred by a wicketkeeper in Test history, is up to 52nd spot. Both players have career-best hauls of rating points.

There were five bowlers from among the world's top 20 in the LG Rankings on show in Lahore and all of them lost rating points, although most of the losses have been modest because of the batsman-friendly conditions.

Irfan Pathan has dropped out of the top ten, slipping two places to 12th position, but India are still represented in that top ten by Anil Kumble, down one spot to ninth place.

India's other player in the top 20, Harbhajan Singh, has slipped two places to 16th, while Pakistan's representatives are Shoaib Akhtar, unchanged in fourth, and Danish Kaneria, down one position to 14th.

Other bowlers on show in the match included India's Ajit Agarkar (46th) and the Pakistan duo of Mohammad Sami (38th) and Naved-ul-Hasan (65th), the latter taking the only wicket to fall in the India innings.

In the LG ICC Player Rankings for all-rounders, Pathan lost rating points but still retains fourth place in the list while Afridi is just hovering outside the top ten.

Australia retain their dominance of the LG ICC Player Rankings for Test batsmen and bowlers with Ricky Ponting and Glenn McGrath topping those respective lists. South Africa's Jacques Kallis is the leading all-rounder.

The remaining matches in the Pakistan - India Test series are as follows:

21 - 25 January - Second Test, Faisalabad
29 January - 2 February, Third Test, Karachi

Full details of the current LG ICC Test Championship and how future results will impact on the table, as well as the LG ICC Player Rankings can be found here