Going purely by the official International Cricket Council rankings, Indian cricket seems to be in the absolute pink of health. The team is seemingly the masters of every format – ranked number one in Test matches, number one in Twenty20 Internationals and number two in One Day Internationals.

But cricket fans will have every reason to dispute that. For instance, India’s number two ranking in ODIs seems bizarre – after the 2015 World Cup, they have been consigned to series losses by the likes of Bangladesh, South Africa and more recently Australia. And while the comprehensive whitewash in the Twenty20 series against Australia came as a measure of relief, it was very much an outlier – since the World Twenty20 final against Sri Lanka in 2014, India lost four of the five Twenty20s they had played before coming to Australia.

And finally number one in Test cricket? To be fair, India did win against Sri Lanka away and South Africa at home recently, but their results before that were not exactly the very best (series losses against England, New Zealand and Australia away). And if the results of two series have such a great impact on the rankings, should not England also be worthy of being the top two, by virtue of defeating Australia in the Ashes first at home and then South Africa, that too away?

To put it bluntly, the official ICC rankings do not always make much sense and a lot of that lies in the way in which the rankings are calculated. In earlier days, they could be dismissed as just one of the many markers to recognise cricketing performance. But the stakes are much higher now: the rankings play a part in determining which teams qualify directly for the ICC Champions Trophy and the World Cup, two of cricket’s most high-profile tournaments. In case the long-delayed ICC Test Championship does take place soon, it is more than likely that the rankings system will be the basis on which the format is devised. The writing is on the wall – if the rankings system is allowed to have as much influence on major cricketing events, it is only fair that it be reconsidered and rehauled if necessary.

Bizarre criteria

Coming to the rankings themselves. Here are some of the criteria, taken from the ICC's website, on which the ODI and the Twenty20 rankings are calculated:

• It is based on individual matches, not on series of matches.

• All ODIs are treated equally. Although the ICC Cricket World Cup final will have more at stake than any other match, every ODI is subject to the same formula for ratings purposes,

• No account is taken of venue.

• No account is taken of margin of victory.

The first and second points especially make for interesting reading. When the very basis of international cricket revolves around bilateral series between two countries, it is inconceivable how series results are not taken into account to calculate the rankings. This basically means that if Australia were to come over to India, thrash India in the first three games and then send out a severely weakened squad who get thrashed by India in the last two games, both the teams would almost get equal weightage in the rankings.

Secondly, when the official document itself states that a World Cup final will have more at stake, how can the match be subject to the same formula as some inconsequential dead rubber? If the rankings are to be taken seriously, India and Sri Lanka playing in the 2014 World Cup Twenty20 final has the same relevance as a one-off Twenty20 played by both teams just to test out their bench strength (which is a common occurrence in Twenty20 matches).

What about home advantage?

Finally, as any cricket lover will readily testify to, one of the enduring features of the game is the principle of home advantage. Unlike many other sports, home advantage has remained a distinct and enduring feature of cricket through the last hundred years or so of its existence. That is precisely why the best teams of all time, whether the all-conquering West Indians of the 1970s or the rampaging Australians of the 1990s, were recognised as the all-time bests for their ability to win away from home.

But bad luck when it comes to the official rankings. As the third point bluntly puts it, the venue is not taken into account. Nor is the margin of victory, so for all intents and purposes, a one-run victory and a two hundred run victory count for the same.

The Test rankings are similar to the ODI and Twenty20 ones except for one change – thankfully, series results are given some importance and are counted as winning an additional Test match for the victor of the series in question. That does not take away from the other flaws outlined above and considering the complexity of a typical Test match, rankings for Test cricket should ideally have a far wider range of criteria. For example, some factors that could be taken into account for a particular Test match are which team took the first innings lead and whether a team conceded a follow-on.

Cricket fans follow the rankings closely to gauge the performance of the teams they support. The rankings should thus serve as the best possible indicator of a team’s performance. But if the premise of calculating these rankings is faulty, then it is the cricket fan at the end who loses out. No system is perfect but there deserves to be a relook into the rankings, considering that they barely seem to reflect the intrinsic features of a much-loved sport.