Dravid takes over the top spot

Brian Lara’s twin failures in the Lord’s Test against England has meant that Rahul Dravid has, for the first time in his career, taken over as the top Test batsman in the PwC Ratings

Wisden Cricinfo staff27-Jul-2004Brian Lara’s twin failures in the Lord’s Test against England has meant that Rahul Dravid has, for the first time in his career, taken over as the top Test batsman in the PwC ratings. Lara aggregated only 55 runs in his two innings at Lord’s, resulting in his rating points slipping to 881, while Dravid’s remained at 892, three more than Matthew Hayden, who moved into second place ahead of Lara.Dravid’s rise to the top has been the result of an amazingly consistent run over the last couple of years – since the tour to the West Indies in 2001-02, he has scored 2526 runs in 23 Tests at an outstanding average of 76.55, with eight centuries, four of them double-hundreds.Apart from a change at the top, the latest ratings also gave Michael Vaughan top billing among England’s batsmen. Vaughan rose five places to 18th, thanks to centuries in each innings at Lord’s. Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who failed to emulate that landmark by just three runs, climbed 12 places to 16th.

Rank	Batsman	Points	Average
1	Dravid	892	58.09
2	Hayden	889	58.14
3	Lara	881	53.43
4	Kallis	833	54.07
5	Ponting	832	54.33
6	Gibbs	815	49.40
7	Inzamam	785	49.63
8	Tendulkar	784	57.39
9	Sehwag	782	52.72
10	Richardson	761	47.94

Meanwhile, Ashley Giles’s Man-of-the-Match performance not only secured him a place on the famous dressing-room honours board, it also propelled him into the top twenty of the PwC Ratings for the first time in his career.In general, it was a match in which bowlers struggled, but Giles rose above the dominance of the bat to take 9 for 210, his best figures in a home Test. Following on from a six-wicket haul against New Zealand at Trent Bridge earlier in the summer, Giles has climbed nine places to 19th, while Pedro Collins – the pick of West Indies’ attack – was up eight places to 15th, thanks to his figures of 7 for 175.Prior to the match, all eyes had been on Steve Harmison, who could have gone top of the list had he taken five or more wickets. Instead he had a disappointing game by his recent high standards, taking just two scalps in the second innings. Even so, he remained second behind Muttiah Muralitharan, and still has the No. 1 spot in his sights as the second Test begins at Edgbaston on Thursday.

Rank	Bowler	Points	Average
1	Muralitharan	886	22.76
2	Harmison	864	24.95
3	Pollock	837	21.46
4	Shoaib	826	24.47
5	McGrath	805	21.61
6	Warne	762	25.47
7	Kumble	751	28.22
8	Gillespie	740	25.71
9	Ntini	722	29.67
10	Harbhajan	635	28.47

Click here for the complete ratings.