Shubman Gill rose to the top of the ICC Men’s Player Rankings to dethrone Babar Azam after a strong start to India’s campaign in the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup.
In the process, he became only the fourth Indian to hold the No 1 ODI batter position, joining Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni, and Virat Kohli.
Mohammed Siraj also moved up two spots to take over the top spot among ODI bowlers, displacing Pakistan’s Shaheen Shah Afridi.
The bowling rankings feature three other Indians in the top 10 with Kuldeep Yadav at fourth, and Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami at eighth and tenth respectively.
Among the batters, Kohli climbed to fourth after a stellar performance at the World Cup where he is the second-highest run-getter so far with 543 runs at an average of 88.29 and two centuries.
Rohit Sharma, who has scored 442 runs at an average of 55.25 including a century, also features in the list at the sixth spot.
Gill has had an outstanding year in One-Day International cricket, scoring 1449 runs from 26 matches and hitting four hundreds, including a double-century.
His average this year is a spectacular 63.00, compared to a career average of 61.02. He had a sluggish start to the World Cup after being out at the start due to dengue fever, but he has 219 runs in six innings, including fifties against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Siraj too had a slow start to the World Cup but took 3/16 and 1/11 against Sri Lanka and South Africa earlier in the week to climb to the top.