After finishing the series on high notes Pakistani players shine in ICC rankings as well. Captain, Babar Azam, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Fawad Alam, Muhammad Rizwan, and Noman Ali gain well in ICC’s latest rankings and climbed up the table.
Shaheen Shah’s Flight
Shaheen Shah started this series with 58 test wickets in 17 matches but this series turned to be his best one as he dismissed 18 batsmen in just 2 matches and got a total of 76 wickets in 19 matches at an average of 25.25.
Afridi is been shining across the formats for Pakistan from T20is to test matches now. Ion Bishop recently said Shaheen as “Diamond in a rough” in the first match between Pakistan and West Indies. Shaheen got 4 wickets in each innings of the first match. In the second match, he got 6 and 4 wickets in respective innings.
With his career best figures of 10/94 he became the fourth Pakistani bowler to take 10 match wickets at sabina park jamaica. Before Afridi, Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Saeed Ajmal has done this job. All of these players took 11 wickets in match.
West Indies won the last test match series against Pakistan back in 2000. So it’s been 21 years now that West Indies have not beaten Pakistan in a test series.
Career Best To Fawad
Fawad Alam’s brilliant knocks in the testing pitches of Sabina Park Jamaica also gave him highest rating of his career. He scored half century in the first innigs of match one and an unbeaten 124* in the second match. With this century he became the quickest asian batsman to score 5 test match centuries.
Fawad overtook India’s Cheteshwar Pujara who score 5 centuries in 22 innings. Fawad scored it in just 22 innings. All of his 5 centuries have came in 5 different countries Pakistan, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, and West Indies.
After the match Fawad said, “Before the start of the match I called my Mother, she said to me go and play your game you will score the century, my father request me in joy as Fawad now it’s tiem to raise your bat in West Indies as well”. All those prayers form family and his efforts took him to his 5th test century.
Fawad Alam is now ranked 21st in the latest ICC test batsman ranking. At 22nd is Azhar Ali and at 19th is Muhammad Rizwan. So from 19 to 22 is all for Pakistani batsmen.
Babar Getting Closer To Top Five
Last week Babar Azam over took David Warner and got the ranking of 8 in the table. Now this week after scoreing a very improtant fifty and a 30+ runs in second match, he is now ranked 7th in the ranking. Babar overtook Indian wikcet keeper Rishabh Pant.
Babar Azam has now 749 points in the ranking. His all time best is 800 vs Bangladesh. Babar Azam was the leading run scorer of the series against West Indies. Not only his batting, he has also got a lot pf appreciations for his captaining skill as well.
Rise To Rizwan And Noman
Muhammad Rizwan has also returned in the top 20 after scoring 31 and 10 not out in the scond match. Now he is ranked 19th among all the test batsman. Aiden Markarm also have equal points to him that are 651.
Left hander Noman Ali performed brilliantly in the second innings of the match. He took 4 crucial wickets for Pakistan in the last day. He started his career at 48th ranking and now he is ranked 44th.
Demotion to Hassan Ali, Muhammad Abbas, Azahar Ali, Abid Ali, and Imran Butt. Their rankings are 17th, 18th, 22nd, 48th, and 133rd respectively.
Social Media Reaction To Pakistan’s Victory
A lot appreciation came to Pakistan after this victory to level the series. 8 times a team has lost 3 wickets for 2 runs or less and only 2 times a team have won that. Both of time it’s done by Pakistan. Once against India and now against West Indies.
Special appreciation came to Shaheen Shah Afridi from all the experts and former players.
Final Words
This series was not only important to Pakistan in terms of leveling the series but also it gave Pakistan very important points for the World Test Championship. Pakistan is now at number 2 in the WTC23 table while India is at the top. Many experts have picked Pakistan as favourite to qualify for the WTC23 final.
Pakistan’s next series is against Bangladesh. This series will be played just after the T20 WC21.
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