Why is Lara top of the ratings?

Like the report of Mark Twain's death, rumours of Brian Lara's loss of form have been greatly exaggerated.

Lara is still number one in the PricewaterhouseCoopers Ratings of Test cricketers. Why?

Players high in the Ratings are those who have performed well in the last two years (although a player's entire career is taken into account). Over the last 18 months, Lara has scored 1023 Test runs at an average of more than 50. These have included the two finest Test innings of his life, 213 and 153 not out against Australia.

Even in the West Indies' dismal 5-nil defeat at the hands of South Africa early in 1999, Lara averaged 37.5, which most cricketers would regard as a good performance - especially against Pollock and Donald. And what were Lara's most recent Test innings? 67 and 75 against New Zealand in Wellington just five months ago, the top scores in each innings.

Lara has only opted out of three Tests so far (against Zimbabwe and then Pakistan). For each Test he misses, he loses 1% of his PwC points. He is due to miss two more Tests against Pakistan. That means that by the time he arrives in England, he will have dropped a further 16 points and he will be below Tendulkar in the Test Ratings.

Where Lara's form has certainly suffered is in One Day Internationals, and perhaps this is where the confusion lies. Lara is only 18th in the latest PwC Ratings of One Day cricket. Again, why? Because in his last 30 one day innings, Lara has passed 50 only twice, and on ten occasions he has failed to get into double figures.

But to say Lara hasn't performed well as a batsman in recent times is a great simplification of the truth.

England beware.

Latest PricewaterhouseCoopers Ratings

TOP TEN TEST BATSMEN (16th May 2000)

1 Brian Lara 873
2 Sachin Tendulkar 863
3 Steve Waugh 841
4 Ricky Ponting 804
5 Saeed Anwar 794
6 Inzamam ul Haq 786
7 Aravinda de Silva 775
8 Justin Langer 767
9 Andy Flower 763
10 Nasser Hussain 750

TOP TEN ODI BATSMEN (16th May 2000)

1 Michael Bevan 795
2 Sourav Ganguly 775
3 Nathan Astle 740
4= Jacques Kallis 723
4= Lance Klusener 723
6 Ricky Ponting 721
7 Neil Johnson 700
8 Adam Gilchrist 684
9 Inzamam ul Haq 681
10 Hansie Cronje 677

(Lara 18th, 634 points)

At the moment, Ricky Ponting and Inzamam are the only batsmen in both top tens.