Virat Kohli has moved up three places to second spot in the ICC rankings for Test batsmen following a prolific home series against Sri Lanka. Kohli is also the No. 1 batsman in ODIs and T20Is, but trails Steven Smith by 45 points in Tests, leaving him short of emulating Ricky Ponting as the only batsman to hold the top rank across formats at the same time.
Kohli scored 610 runs in five innings in the Test series against Sri Lanka, making a hundred and back-to-back double centuries. The 243 in the third Test in Delhi was Kohli’s career-best score, and helped him overtake David Warner, Cheteshwar Pujara, Kane Williamson and Joe Root in the rankings.
While Kohli has 893 points, Smith’s lead is considerable in Tests – his tally of 941 last week was the joint fifth-highest in Test history. Smith is presently on 938 points. Ponting held the No. 1 rank simultaneously across formats in 2005-06, and Matthew Hayden is the only other batsman to have been top-ranked across formats.
For Sri Lanka, their captain Dinesh Chandimal broke into the top ten for the first time in his career: he moved up eight spots and is presently ninth after making 366 runs in the Test series against India.
