The latest ICC Rankings witnessed a colossal rise for the twin centurions Sanju Samson and Tilak Varma, the latter especially having made a jump of 69 spots no less. Varma, who started the series with scores of 33 and 20, turned on beast mode, hitting back-to-back centuries in the third and fourth T20Is against South Africa in Centurion and Johannesburg. The twin hundreds helped Varma tise to the third spot on the ICC T20 rankings for the batters, one place ahead of skipper Suryakumar Yadav, who had a quiet series.
Varma, who returned to the T20 fold with Riyan Parag and Shivam Dube injured, made the most of his opportunities. The left-hander became only the fifth batter in T20I history to score back-to-back centuries in the format and now has ensured that he is going nowhere as far as the T20 setup is concerned.
The fourth batter on the same list of consecutive tons, Sanju Samson paid the price of recording a couple of ducks in the series. However, with two centuries, he too rose by 17 places to 22nd spot, one behind Shai Hope, who too moved up by 16 spots after a 24-ball 54 for the West Indies against England.
Among other big gainers for the batters, Kusal Mendis was up by three spots to No 12 while South Africa’s Tristan Stubbs, who played a couple of good knocks against India, too moved up by three to No 23.
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For bowlers, Australia’s Nathan Ellis jumped up by 15 places to No 11 after a superb show in three games against Pakistan while Adam Zampa leapfrogged the likes of Rashid Khan and Gudakesh Motie to get into third place. Among Indians, Arshdeep Singh was back in the top 10 being up by three spots while Axar Patel too made a 10-place jump from No 23 to 13. England’s Jofra Archer and Haris Rauf too were up by five and four places to be in No 16 and No 17 spots respectively.
Varun Chakravarthy, the journeyman, who has been terrific since his return to the Indian side, made a massive jump of 36 places to 28th spot and similarly for Marco Jansen, who went up from No 45 to 25 with a rise of 20 spots.
