Virat Kohli jumps past Steve Smith to become the seventh Indian to become the No.1 Test batsman in the world.
Virat Kohli has achieved another personal milestone by becoming the seventh India batsman and first since Sachin Tendulkar in June 2011, to top the MRF Tyres ICC Player Rankings for Test Batsmen, which were released on Sunday morning following the conclusion of the Edgbaston Test.
When the latest updates were made, the India captain was placed right on top of the perchwith a career-high 934 ratings points, just ahead of Smith, who is at 929 points.
India lost the Edgbaston Test by 31 runs, but it wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of their talismanic leader. Kohli scored 149 – his 22nd Test century – and 51, a total of exactly 200 runs even as India, the No.1 Test team in the world, scored only 274 and 162.
Kohli scored 149 and 51 in India’s 31-run defeat and has gone up by 31 points, which have helped him to end Steve Smith’s 32-month reign as the top-ranked batsman and reach the top of the summit for the first time in his 67-Test career.
Kohli now leads Smith (who had held the top spot since December 2015) by five points, but will have to maintain the form in the remaining four Tests to finish the series as the world’s highest-ranked batsman.
Tendulkar had joined South Africa’s Jacques Kallis in number-one position in January 2011, but had dropped to second spot following the Jamaica Test in June 2011 after he had missed the three-Test series against the West Indies.
Apart from Kohli and Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Gautam Gambhir, Sunil Gavaskar, Virender Sehwag and Dilip Vengsarkar are the other India batsmen to have achieved number-one rankings during their careers.
However, at 934 points, Kohli has become India’s highest-ranked batsman, 14th overall, on the all-time tally of points. Kohli had entered the Edgbaston Test on 903 points, 13 points behind Gavaskar, and is now ahead of the ICC Cricket Hall of Famer by 18 points.
