Suryakumar goes past Babar to No. 3 on T20I batters’ rankings

Hazlewood remains the No. 1-ranked T20I bowler after picking up two wickets in the Mohali T20I

Suryakumar Yadav’s remarkable rise up the men’s T20I batting rankings has now taken him past Babar Azam to No. 3, placing him within striking distance of Aiden Markram (just 12 points ahead at No. 2) and not too far from top-ranked Mohammad Rizwan, who has 825 points to Suryakumar’s 780.

All three of Rizwan, Suryakumar and Babar played good hands on Tuesday night. Against England in Karachi, Rizwan scored 68 in 46 balls and Babar hit 31 in 24, as Pakistan scored 158 for 7. That wasn’t nearly enough to prevent England from going 1-0 up in the series, though. Suryakumar’s 46 off 25 was a much more enterprising inning compared to the ones from the Pakistan openers, but he, too, ended on the losing side, as Australia went 1-0 up in Mohali.

There is a T20 World Cup around the corner, but all the top batters have a chance to outdo the others in the lead-up to it: India has two more T20Is against Australia and then three against South Africa, all at home, while Pakistan has six more games to go against England in what is the longest bilateral T20I series between Full-Member nations in history.

Dawid Malan and Aaron Finch, who are both in action in the two ongoing series, are currently in fifth and sixth places respectively and can move up if they can put together a decent sequence of scores.

At the end of the Mohali and Karachi T20Is, a few other players also made good progress.

Of the big-performing Indians on the night, Hardik Pandya hit a 30-ball 71 not out, and that took him up 22 places to No. 65 among batters, while Axar Patel’s 3 for 17 took him up 24 places to No. 33 among bowlers. And Josh Hazlewood was on the mark as usual, returning 2 for 39 to maintain his No. 1 rank among bowlers, while Adil Rashid’s 2 for 27 in Karachi helped him hold on to his third place; Tabraiz Shamsi is sandwiched between the two.

Haris Rauf and Mohammad Nawaz were impressive with the ball against England too, Rauf returning 1 for 23 and Nawaz conceding just 20 runs in four wicketless overs. As a result, Rauf moved to 21st among bowlers, a jump of four spots, while Nawaz moved up three spots to 31st.