Two Crowns in One Week: The Real Story Behind Marco Jansen and Abhishek Sharma's No. 1 Rankings

The rankings page refreshes without a sound. On a Delhi desk, at that hour when the newspaper world is asleep, the ICC's weekly update opens like a cold ledger. This time it placed two names at the top. Marco Jansen — first among Test bowlers, and first among Test allrounders as well, off ten wickets in two Tests, a 5/33 in one innings and 85 runs batting at No. 8. On the other side, Abhishek Sharma, who reclaimed the No. 1 T20I batting spot after 113 off 38 balls. Two formats, two continents, one week. The news is clean. The question is what the news is testifying to.

This ICC update (published on icc-cricket.com as part of the weekly rankings cycle) is a roundup — Test, ODI and T20I stacked on the same page. From the South Africa–Australia Test series came Jansen and Temba Bavuma, whose 179 in that stretch lifted him; Scott Boland's bowling ranking shifted, Harry Brook moved up the batting list, and a name like Simon Harmer's surfaced near the top of a spin column. From the India–New Zealand T20I series came Abhishek's surge, in a series where Ishan Kishan's injury had already rearranged the combination. From the ODI tri-series in Pakistan and the UAE came entries for Shaheen Shah Afridi and Azmatullah Omarzai. Mitchell Starc, Matt Henry, Ollie Robinson, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja all stand close by in these lists — which is both the strength and the weakness of a roundup like this. Five countries on one page, three formats, and no way for a reader to know which number came from which ground.

How rankings actually work matters here. It is a weighted average — every innings contributes points, older innings slowly shed their weight, and a player with more matches has a more stable number. In twelve years of reading these tables, I keep returning to one thing: a ranking is the place where the cricket calendar, a player's form and a selection committee's mood are weighed on the same scale, and nobody tells you what weight each was given. A spectacular innings does not hand over a crown; the crown arrives when all three move in the same direction.

The most interesting thing this week is not Abhishek's hundred but the road that hundred took to the top of the list. His scores in this stretch read 29, 27 and then 113 off 38 — form was already present, the opportunity to reach the summit came later. The No. 1 T20I batting chair this week was decided not on the field but by an injury bulletin. The innings that Ishan Kishan's absence opened up is the innings that carried Abhishek back to the top. This is the truth about rankings that roundups never write: a top spot is often earned not by beating someone but by someone not playing. Reading 113 off 38 as the sole cause of the crown erases the entire story that began in the physio's room.

On the other side, Jansen's double crown. Sitting at the summit of both Test bowling and Test allrounding in the same week looks like a large feat, and it is. But there is a second way to read it. The real headline in the Test allrounder list is not that Jansen reached the top, but that 85 runs at No. 8 were enough to get him there. That list is thin. Players who can bowl four spells and also bat long at seven or eight are counted on one hand in world cricket. When the pool is small, one good week changes the crown — which does not diminish Jansen's excellence, only clarifies the scale it is measured on.

Jansen's 5/33 and the 85 that followed are two ends of one argument. Lower-order runs are the most expensive currency in Test cricket now, because the fast-bowling load has risen and batting depth has thinned. South Africa's structure gives Jansen a place where he is both bowler and batter. The ranking formula counts that dual role generously — a player who appears in two lists climbs at double speed. That generosity belongs as much to the formula as to Jansen.

Bavuma belongs on this page because he is climbing at an age when Test captains are expected only to manage. That 179 and the ranking gain afterwards tell you that patience still has a price in Test batting. Boland and Harmer collide with this list because they are witnesses to something columns do not write: some bowlers play far more at home grounds than others, and the ranking never asks where — only what.

Shaheen and Omarzai arrive from the ODI table, the least-read of the three, even though the next World Cup's qualification is built there.

The third thing, most ignored in this genre: the seams between formats. A Test No. 1 and a T20I No. 1 are placed on the same page, and the reader's mind starts weighing them on one scale. A Test ranking is built from five days of labour; a T20I ranking can be built from one evening. One phrase — 'number one' — puts the same crown on two completely different kinds of work.

Collective memory's oldest habit is to treat No. 1 as a verdict, as if the list had settled something. A ranking is a flowing average, where weight leaves and weight arrives every week. At 4 a.m. the Gabba was less a ground than a held breath, and from that night I learned that the most important part of a scorecard is what is not written on it. In the same way, the most important part of this rankings page is what is missing from it: matches played, series strength, and who has not played for months. The update itself acknowledges that the top Test bowling spots can change quickly — and that forecast is right, because Bumrah, Starc, Henry and Robinson sit close enough in points that one innings flips the order.

The second branch of the same habit is the incomplete frame. There is no women's ranking anywhere in this list. That is not a conspiracy, it is a habit; the roundup's template treats men's cricket as the default. But habits become part of the record too. In the week we are running headlines about two men's crowns, where was the women's table — that question matters, because the answer is usually that it changed on another page, on another day, with nobody watching.

I went looking for a match and found a silence with a pulse. In 2026, in a hostel room, on that night at The Oval, I first felt that cricket's biggest story is sometimes not the score but the atmosphere. The hostel room was quiet. The 180 runs were not. After that night I decided that behind every number I would look for the room in which it was made.

The third Test between South Africa and Australia is still running, and the update itself records that the top chairs can move quickly. The crown we are making this week's biggest story could sit on another head next week.

I keep a notebook of everything the broadcast camera forgives. This week it has two names, three formats and one injury note in it. The question is what we will remember five years from now — the No. 1 crown, or that 85 at No. 8, which moved a list it never saw.