Abhishek Sharma Returns to No.1 in T20I Rankings, Marco Jansen Claims Double Test Crown

On Monday night, in a flat in Hyderabad, the television was off and the phone was on. Someone in the "SRH Beat" WhatsApp group sent a photograph of a scorecard — 38 balls, 113 runs. Underneath it, one line: "Sir, will he come back to No.1?" I did not answer then. Rankings arrive on Wednesday, and the ICC calendar does not read anyone's feelings on a Tuesday.

I was in the third row of the press box that evening. When Abhishek Sharma walked out to bat, the gentleman beside me put his camera down and said, "Today is worth watching." The first part of the innings was as quiet as the first over of any innings. The dressing room was quiet before the noise arrived — and so was the ground. Then the ball started crossing the rope, and the fastest part of that evening was not what the scorecard records. What stayed with me was that across 38 balls and 113 runs, Abhishek did not change his method once.

On Wednesday afternoon came the ICC release. Abhishek Sharma is back at No.1 in the T20I batting rankings with 897 rating points. He took the spot from Ishan Kishan, who slipped two places to third and sits 31 points behind Abhishek — roughly 866. And in the same release was the second, quieter story: Marco Jansen. The South African all-rounder climbed five places to No.1 in the Test bowling rankings with 876 points, and simultaneously took the No.1 all-rounder slot, ending Ravindra Jadeja's reign of more than four years.

It is worth being clear about what kind of news this is. An ICC ranking is not a verdict; it is a moving average. A weighted basket of recent innings, opposition strength and match impact produces a number. So a "return to No.1" is arithmetic, not a coronation. An innings of 113 does push the average up sharply, but it pushes a four-innings weighted figure — it does not redraw the whole picture.

The most interesting number in that release is not 897. It is 883. Sahibzada Farhan sits second, only 14 points behind. Fourteen. One short innings, one unbeaten fifty, one good day, and the top spot changes hands. In T20I batting, that gap is so thin that the phrase "the world's No.1 batter" will have to be re-read every week. This is where editorial convenience and sporting truth part ways: a headline wants a clean story, someone up and someone down. In reality, three men are standing on three adjacent steps of the same staircase.

I learned more from the empty seats than the full ones, and the empty space here is the question the ICC release does not ask: why did Kishan's points fall? Not because he batted badly. Because he did not bat at all. A player sitting out injured is being measured for absence, not form. That is not a flaw in the system, it is the system's nature — but when the story is written, the phrase "dropped two places" quietly hides the injury. In the debate over India's T20 opening pair, that distinction matters, because selectors do not pick from a ratings table; they pick from a fitness report.

And this is where Abhishek's story outgrows the headline. India's T20 top order offers Abhishek, Kishan and Shreyas Iyer — three different batters, three different risks. Abhishek attacks from ball one; Kishan builds and then detonates. A five-match series is still running, and the table will move after every game. I put an informal question to my group: "Do 897 points prove Abhishek is the most dangerous T20 batter in the world?" Most answered: not quite, but the bravest. That felt like the honest answer.

Now turn to Jansen, because the texture of his story is different. To top the Test bowling and all-rounder charts at the same time is rare, and it belongs to players whose contribution is genuinely split down the middle. Across two Tests against Australia he made 26 and 35 in Durban with 3/68 and 1/45; in Gqeberha he made 85 and took 5/33 and 1/34. That is precisely the profile the all-rounder formula rewards, because the table carries both skills at once.

There is a pause worth noting here. Ravindra Jadeja had held the No.1 Test all-rounder spot for more than four years, one of the least discussed achievements in Indian Test cricket, because staying on that table demands doing two jobs continuously. Losing the spot is not a collapse; it reflects a lighter recent bowling workload. At the table, every pause has a price — and this time the pause was Jadeja's.

Look at the top five Test bowlers: Jansen first, then Mitchell Starc, Matt Henry, Ollie Robinson and Jasprit Bumrah. The spread of names suggests there is no single throne in fast bowling now — different methods, similar points. Bumrah's presence is encouraging for India given how long he was out of the game.

There is a South African story the headlines missed. Temba Bavuma rose four places to No.2 among Test batters on the back of a Player of the Match performance. For a captain who was written off not long after taking the job, that ascent is part of a rebuild South Africa conducted without noise. Cricket's largest changes often happen where the cameras are fewest.

Here is where I part company with the ICC's framing. The release notes that "plenty of other big movers" shifted. It reads gently, but it conceals the players who went down. A ranking is a mirror held up to your fixture list, not to your ability. The 14-point gap between Farhan's 883 and Abhishek's 897 does not say who is the better batter; it says who they faced, how often they played, and how many of those matches the world actually watched. A run scored in front of fewer cameras is just as real, and counts for less.

My second disagreement protects the person, not the institution. Calling Kishan's slide to third a "dip in form" is easy and wrong. Injury is outside a player's control, yet the table penalises it exactly as it penalises poor performance. The question is not about the ICC's maths. It is about our habit of storytelling. We should write that he is out injured and his points fell as a result — not that he slipped two places, as though something happened on the field.

What next? The next T20I and the next rankings release are both close. Abhishek has a No.1 to defend, Farhan 14 points to close, Kishan a fitness report to clear. The real question is not which of them tops the table. It is whether India's team management treats a one-point edge as a selection argument — because rankings do not pick players, they only supply ammunition for an argument. For Jansen the question is simpler and harder: staying on top of two tables at once is more difficult than reaching them. My notebook is still open. Sixty years teach you to hear the pulse before the headline — and this week the pulse sounded like 14 points.