Tracking Zimbabwe's progress from here (Tests)

[Kriterion_BD]

HHM/pariah wants to know what happens if Zimbabwe fail with Taylor and Jarvis back. Well we can track ZIM's progress via my rankings formula. I've since tweaked since a couple of weeks ago when Zimbabwe appeared higher ranked than West Indies due to a glitch in the formula.

Here are the full rankings since April 2015:

Rank. Team (wins-losses-draws) - Rating

1. England (17-16-5) - 2.942
2. India (20-2-6) - 2.576
3. Pakistan (11-10-2) - 2.568
4. Australia (16-11-3) - 2.293
5. South Africa (9-9-7) - 2.113
6. New Zealand (9-10-4) - 2.012
7. Sri Lanka (11-15-1) - 1.723
8. Bangladesh (3-7-4) - 0.731
9. West Indies (4-15-4) - 0.495
10. Zimbabwe (0-5-0) - 0.021

The ratings are based on series results, divided by the number of matches so that a 5 match series has the same weight as a 1 off Test. Thus the rating represents each team's average performance in a match/series/whatever. Ratings are based off opposition's overall strength, as well as respective batting and bowling strength. Bonuses are given for wins and draws in alien conditions, and penalties for losses or draws at home. Also the margin of victory/defeat factors in the rating.

I think it correlates fairly well to what anyone would say is the current real time rank of the Test teams.

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I am also entering the batting and bowling averages as well as the ratio (batting avg/bowling avg) which I call the competitive index (CI):

Rank. Team (batting average, bowling average) - CI

1. England (33.60, 32.27) - 1.041
2. India (41.61, 25.14) - 1.655
3. Pakistan (33.64, 34.19) - 0.984
4. Australia (36.89, 28.58) - 1.291
5. South Africa (29.25, 27.57) - 1.061
6. New Zealand (34.70, 35.29) - 0.983
7. Sri Lanka (28.31, 33.56) - 0.844
8. Bangladesh (30.44, 41.03) - 0.742
9. West Indies (25.38, 41.47) - 0.612
10. Zimbabwe (27.50, 57.25) - 0.480

[jaybro]

Unless Zimbabwe play 6 Tests at the very minimum a year they will make no progression because they will be forever starting from scratch.

Zimbabwe played 4 Tests last year and look like playing 4 this year ( having not played a single test in 2015 ). With Bangladesh now seemingly not interested in playing Zimbabwe fixtures will be hard to get.

[Kriterion_BD]

Now that Jarvis and Taylor are back, I hope that we can squeeze in a couple of Tests vs ZIM after the tri series in January. Bangladesh could use a couple more games as well.

[Kriterion_BD]

Unless Zimbabwe play 6 Tests at the very minimum a year they will make no progression because they will be forever starting from scratch.

My rankings attempts to fix the flaws within the ICC's official rankings. The ICC doesn't grant bonuses for away wins or penalties for home losses. It also doesn't matter if you win by 1 run or an innings and 200.

However, the one good thing the ICC does is it divides the total points by the matches played, something I have incorporated. Thus any ratings is actually a "per game played" average negating the fact that Bangladesh only plays 5-6 Tests per year and England plays around 14-15. We had about 5 points on the ICC table in March 2013. We have played a total of 27 since then in exactly 4.5 years at 6 games per year and have gotten up to 74 points and just 1 point behind the WI in 8th place and 19 points behind Pakistan in 6th.

[Kriterion_BD]

I've added another table in the OP with batting and bowling averages to further keep track of more easy tangible stats.