Shows no working, gives no right of reply

Transparency, accountability, relevance. The International Cricket Council claimed to stand for all this and more when Malcolm Speed came aboard as their new chief executive in July 2001. But today, in a dozy corner of NW8, they turned Test cricket into more of a closed shop than ever before.

Cricket is a troubled sport, and the sooner its rulers realise this the better. Even the backwoodsmen in the English counties have accepted a need to broaden their appeal to the wider public, a miracle in itself. However, the one element of society that needed no introduction to the game was the anorak brigade - but now, in order to understand the ICC's new table, you have to become one yourself.

For all its flaws, the original ICC (formerly Wisden) World Championship was a well-meaning attempt to rationalise an increasingly chaotic tangle of fixtures. It was simple, which made it (in theory at least) a topic of discussion down the pub, and it was briefly controversial, when South Africa went top for three months from January. So far, so good. At least it got tongues wagging.

But controversy, of course, has no place in the ICC lexicon. And so, with a ruthlessness that has been palpably missing from every major ICC issue this winter - from Mugabe to chucking to sledging - the entire system has been scrapped. It is cricket's equivalent of going home to kick the dog after a terrible day at work.

Many moons ago, in the days when I could tell my Pythagoras from my elbow, I was forever being told to "show my working" in maths exams. Clearly, that lesson has not been heeded by David Kendix, the Lord's statistician who developed this bewildering system, and was also responsible for last year's one-day puzzlement.

By taking the sum total of all matches played since August 1999, multiplying by a factor of 40, adding 0.5 for each series won in that time and subtracting the number you first thought of, Australia have ended up with a rating of 129 something-or-others - Bangladesh, by contrast, remain laughable on 4. England will jump to 98 whojamaflips if they win their Zimbabwe series 2-0, but will remain on 95 thingummys if they manage just a 1-0 win, as they did in 2000. On the plus side, every Test now counts towards the ratings, but was it necessary to tear down the brickwork just to change the wallpaper?

The ICC believes it was, and have justified the new system by saying it is imperative that there is no ambiguity when deciding on a future World Champion. It seems they have learned something from the Zimbabwe affair after all - the best way to become a genuine ruling body is to obliterate the right to reply. But already, there is an anomaly in this all-conquering system. The only change is that a dishevelled Pakistan have overtaken a moderately resurgent West Indies in seventh place, but where once there were tables to argue the case, now it has to be accepted as fact.

Whatever happened to the glorious uncertainty of sport?

Andrew Miller is assistant editor of Wisden Cricinfo in London.