The battle for the top spot of the ICC Men's T20I Batter Rankings continues to heat up as Suryakumar Yadav maintained his no. 1 position and Pakistan duo Mohammad Rizwan and Babar Azam get the chance to close in on the Indian batter at the head of proceedings.
While Suryakumar currently holds a commanding lead at the top of the T20I rankings for batters with 906 rating points, Rizwan placed second with 811 rating points. Babar moved one spot up to third with 755 points, followed by South African Aiden Markram and New Zealand's Devon Conway in the fourth and fifth positions respectively on the rankings that were updated by the ICC on Wednesday.
Both Babar and Rizwan sat out Pakistan's most recent T20I series against Bangladesh. It was Devon Conway's absence from New Zealand's series against Sri Lanka that led to Pakistan skipper improving one place to third on the latest set of rankings, The duo will get a further opportunity to make inroads on Suryakumar when Pakistan commence their five-game T20I series against New Zealand on Saturday.
A host of New Zealand and Sri Lanka players that featured in the recently completed T20I series were rewarded for their performances.Sri Lankan Kusal Mendis (up 11 spots to equal 25th) and New Zealand right-hander Tim Seifert (from outside the top 100 to 36th) were the other big winners on the latest set of T20I rankings for batter.
Young spinner Maheesh Theekshana, who was the match winner for Sri Lanka in the first match of the series, is the biggest eye-catcher as the 22-year-old rose to a career-high rating and equal fifth-place on the rankings for bowlers.
His teammate Wanindu Hasaranga was expensive during the series and duly dropped two places to fourth on the T20I bowler rankings, with Afghanistan pacer Fazalhaq Farooqi (second) and Australia seamer Josh Hazlewood (third) both rising a place as a result.
Afghanistan holds the top two spots on the T20I bowler rankings, with spinner Rashid Khan leading Farooqi in what is a tight ongoing race for the top spot.