Two Crowns for Jansen, a Return for Abhishek — and a Table With No Date

The ICC Men's Player Rankings is a document, and like every document it needs a date on it. This week's table carries one name in two places: Marco Jansen is first among Test bowlers and first among Test all-rounders. The same table has Abhishek Sharma back at No. 1 among T20I batters.

For several years I have pasted ranking cuttings into a notebook after every series. My eye goes less to the top row than to the numbers beneath it. The top row is news; the numbers beneath are history. This time, the numbers beneath are the more interesting reading.

The context

Jansen's bowling in the Test against Australia was the kind that turned the match — the same performance that carried him to the top of both lists. Two summits in one week means he added points twice from a single innings. The bowling table weighs wickets and economy; the all-rounder table adds bat to ball.

Dale Steyn called Jansen the best cricketer in the world. It is praise, it arrives without a date or a context, and it should be read as opinion rather than evidence. The harder fact is that Ravindra Jadeja held No. 1 among Test all-rounders for four years. Four years is not built out of one brilliant match. Jansen has taken his place, and the story in that change belongs less to Jansen's rise than to Jadeja's long reign.

Abhishek's return rests on one innings against New Zealand — a 35-ball century, 113 off 38. Before that, Ishan Kishan had taken the spot from him in July, and that swap proved temporary. Travis Head is in the same race, which tells you that reaching the top and staying there are different jobs.

The rest of the table is not empty. Temba Bavuma made 179 and the series finished 1-1. Harry Brook, Scott Boland and Simon Harmer moved up. Sanju Samson, Finn Allen, Mitchell Santner and Arshdeep Singh shifted in the T20I list; Ben Duckett, Shaheen Afridi, Azmatullah Omarzai and Bernard Scholtz in the ODI list; Mohammad Nabi through the Pakistan-England-Sri Lanka ODI tri-series.

The core

Here is what gets left out of a double summit: the workload. In Tests the workload of a top-ranked bowler usually runs fifteen to twenty overs an innings. To be No. 1 among all-rounders in the same match means he batted after those overs. A fast bowler coming in at seven or eight completes four innings of physical accounting across five days. Years of sitting at the edge of grounds have taught me this — a fast bowler's real examination comes in the third spell, not the first. The rankings never show the fifth day, the one where the body heals.

The two tables are computed differently, but they are measured from the same day's bowling. One fine spell was deposited in two accounts — wickets in one, ratio in the other. That is a technical edge fast bowlers rarely get, because their batting contribution is usually negligible. Jansen's strength is not his height; it is the ability to do two jobs without changing gear.

In T20I the picture inverts. That table runs on opportunities, not matches. Three or four innings in a series, two of them good, and the ranking turns. Abhishek's 38-ball innings is the cleanest example. 113 is excellent on its own terms, but the ranking converts it into points — and points stop where the next innings begins. Ishan Kishan took the spot in July and handed it back within weeks. The T20I crown is borrowed, not transferred.

The two tables share one more thing. The rankings tally contribution beyond the field as much as they tally the points column. Jadeja's four-year reign is the proof. Nobody holds No. 1 for four years without a consistent contribution across three different kinds of series. Jansen reaching the top proves the all-rounder table can turn on one performance; it does not prove it holds.

I have written in this notebook more than once that some records are kept in mud, not in ink. The domestic matches these two names climbed out of appear nowhere in this table. Jansen's left-arm angle, Abhishek's straight game — the domestic seasons, the nets, the recovery days behind them find no column in any ranking.

And one gap still grates. This bulletin carries no date, no points, and no margin between first and second. A No. 1 without points is a display, and without a date it is a rumour.

The contrarian angle

One angle gets lost at the summit: Jansen's double crown was built in one series, and such series have short lives. Reaching the top of the Test bowling table takes years; slipping off it takes one bad match. What Jadeja did across four years was extraordinary; Jansen has only begun. Reaching the summit and staying there are separate games — the first makes a report, the second makes a record.

On the shape of the report itself: arriving at No. 1 is presented as a permanent achievement when it is a weekly movement. A new table arrives every week, and every table changes a name. If three summits can change in a single week, the story is not about a person; it is about a system that manufactures a new story every week and forgets the old one.

The third is a matter of fairness to Abhishek. The right way to read 113 off 38 is not that he is back at No. 1. The right question is whether two quiet innings at the start of the next series would still leave him there. Ishan's case shows the T20I spot is not permanent; it is rented. That boy did not run past history; he ran into a question we had been avoiding — what exactly is a T20I No. 1 a reward for? If it is rented, the headline should say so — a return, not a capture.

Reading Steyn's praise as evidence is unfair to the praise itself. A sentence with no date is an opinion, not testimony.

The takeaway

What to watch. Jansen's twin crowns hold only until another Test series puts its full load on his shoulders — and that load will be counted in overs, not rankings. For Abhishek, the first match of the next series matters more than the last one, because his No. 1 rests on an innings, not a season. And to whoever keeps this table: print the points with the ranking, and the date. Every change has a kitchen table we never see — and the story was not in the scoreline; it was in the walk home.