How the ICC Rankings Work: Player Ratings and Team Tables

By the Live Cricket Zone editorial team · Last reviewed 24 October 2026

The ICC publishes two separate kinds of ranking: player rankings for batters, bowlers and all-rounders, and team rankings for each format in men's and women's cricket. They use different methods. Player ratings are a weighted record of individual performances. Team ratings are built from match and series results. Both are widely quoted and both are often misread, mostly because people treat them as averages. They are not.

Player ratings: the 0 to 1000 scale

Every player rating sits on a scale from 0 to 1000. There is a separate list for each discipline (batting, bowling, all-rounder) in each format (Test, ODI, T20I). A rating above 900 is exceptional and few players reach it. A rating in the 700s or 800s usually marks a player among the best in the world in that format at that moment. The number itself has no unit. It is not runs, wickets or an average, and two ratings can only be compared within the same list.

After each match, a player earns a performance score for that game, and their rating moves towards it. Because the rating is a weighted moving average of these match scores, one big innings lifts a rating but does not transform it. A long run of good scores does.

What goes into a batter's match score

Runs scored. This is the starting point, but it is adjusted by everything below.
The quality of the bowling attack. Runs made against highly rated bowlers are worth more than the same runs against a weak attack. The method uses the ratings of the bowlers the batter actually faced in the match.
The run-scoring context of the match. A score of 60 in a game where both sides struggled to pass 200 is worth more than 60 in a match of 400-run totals.
Not-outs. An unbeaten innings is credited with some allowance for the runs the batter might have gone on to make, so it is not treated the same as a dismissal for the same score.
The result. Performances in a winning cause carry a bonus, which is larger when the win comes against a strong team.

What goes into a bowler's match score

Wickets, weighted by who was dismissed. Dismissing a top-rated batter is worth more than dismissing a tail-ender.
Runs conceded, judged against the run-scoring context of the match. Conceding three runs an over in a high-scoring T20 is very different from doing so on a slow pitch.
Workload. Bowling a lot of overs in a match is credited, so a bowler cannot climb the table from a handful of short spells.
The result, as with batters.

The all-rounder rating combines a player's batting and bowling ratings into a single number, so it rewards players who are strong at both rather than outstanding at one and absent from the other.

Why recent form counts most

Older matches decay in weight. The most recent performances count in full, and each earlier match counts for a little less. That is why a player who has not played for a while can slide down the list without doing anything wrong, and why a player returning from injury needs a few matches to recover their position. New players are also held back: their ratings are scaled down until they have played enough matches for the number to be meaningful. A debutant who scores a century in their first Test does not jump straight into the top ten.

Team rankings: a different method

Team ratings are built from results, not from individual performances. Each match (or, in Test cricket, each series) earns a team a number of ranking points, and the rating is simply the total points earned divided by the number of matches counted. Rounding it off gives the whole-number rating shown in the published table.

How many points a result is worth depends on the gap between the two teams' ratings beforehand. Beating a team rated close to your own earns points based on the opponent's rating plus a margin. Losing to a similar team earns the opponent's rating minus that margin. When the gap is large, the favourite gains little for an expected win and the underdog gains a lot for an upset. The effect is that a team cannot inflate its rating by playing many weaker opponents, and an upset moves the table more than a routine result.

The rolling window

Team ratings cover results from roughly the last three to four years. The most recent part of that window counts in full and the older part counts at half weight. Once a year, usually around May, the ICC runs an annual update: the oldest year drops out and the remaining years are reweighted. This is why the team tables can change noticeably on a day when no cricket was played. Commentators sometimes describe it as a team "losing" points, but nothing has been taken away. Results that used to count have simply aged out of the window.

When the rankings change

Player rankings are recalculated after matches and the ICC publishes updated tables regularly, usually weekly when there is international cricket to process. Team tables change after each series and at the annual update. Our rankings page shows the latest published lists. When a number on our page differs from the ICC's own site, the ICC figure is correct and ours is waiting for the next refresh.

Rankings and other tables

The ICC Test team ranking is not the same thing as the World Test Championship table. The rankings measure results across all Test cricket over several years. The WTC is a two-year competition with its own points system and a final. A team can top one and sit lower in the other, and that happens often. The same goes for tournament points tables, which only count matches in that event and use net run rate to separate teams level on points.

How to read them sensibly

Compare ratings, not just positions. A gap of three rating points between first and second is effectively a tie. A gap of eighty is not.
Check the format. A player can be in the top five in T20Is and nowhere in Tests, and that is normal.
Remember the decay. A player who is rested or injured will drift down even when nothing is wrong with their form.
Use them alongside the raw numbers. Averages and strike rates tell you what happened. Ratings tell you how impressive it was given who it happened against. Our guide to averages, strike rates and economy covers the raw numbers.