ICC Test Ratings.

[Donny]

Batsmen.

Williamson up to #1. Smith drops to 3.

1. Kane Williamson 890
2. Virat Kohli 879
3 Steve Smith 877
4. Marnus Labu 850
5. Babar Azam 789
6. Ajinkya Rahane 784
7. David Warner 777
8. Ben Stokes 760
9. Joe Root 738
10. Cheteshwar Pujara 728

[Donny]

Little change for the bowlers.

[Donny]

Williamson's ton, today, may lift his rating to 900+.

Then, he can deservedly be rated with the best.

[Donny]

He did rate 915 after his 200 n.o. against Bangladesh, 2 years ago.

Subsequent innings of 0, 4, 20, 51, 4, 34, 14, 9, 0, 3 & 5 brought him back to the mere mortals.

[K]

...
I have always felt this to be the case but not had the courage of my convictions to post it. I believe you are spot on. Extremely rarely are they logically, actually and factually able to compare apples with apples. However it presents some amusing episodes of fun facts to be taken with a huge grain of salt.

I am glad at least one other Nickster sees the light!

I've tried in past comments in this forum to explain the humungous difference between a real formula and a made-up formula. A real formula you can trust to give you truth. A made-up formula you should demand reasons why you should believe.

e.g.

The fomula for the area of a circle they taught in school is a real formula. If you use this formula, you will get the true area of the circle.

Ritchie Benaud's rule for ODIs that double the score after 30 overs gives the final score is a made-up formula. It's not supposed to be truth. It's just a rough guide.

And ranking players who are not directly playing against each other is much, much, much harder than just predicting a team's innings total when it's already more than half over!


Misunderstanding the value of made-up numbers in sport may be relatively harmless. But misunderstanding this sort of stuff out in the real world can have very, very, very bad consequences. Possible bad consequences include injustice and death in our society.

[Donny]

It may depend on how Smithy goes in the second dig, but he only needs 14 points to regain his #1 ranking.

His masterful 131, today, has probably done the trick already.

[Pies4shaw]

^ Williamson having top spot ahead of Bradsmith is like, say, Mungo Jerry knocking The Beatles off the top of the charts for a week. It didn't make Mungo Jerry better than The Beatles, either.

[ronrat]

^ Williamson having top spot ahead of Bradsmith is like, say, Mungo Jerry knocking The Beatles off the top of the charts for a week. It didn't make Mungo Jerry better than The Beatles, either.

It did in the Summertime

[Lazza]

^^^^^^^^

[K]

When these "fun" rankings gave the numbers P4S liked, he took them very, very seriously. P4S has been suffering from Dilip Vengsarkar Syndrome. (Though the syndrome is named after him, I don't believe Dilip himself suffered from it.) Back in the 80s, Dilip Vengsarkar was ranked number 1, ahead of greats like Viv & AB. Hey, maybe it did show Dilip was in hot form. But no one took it too seriously as a measure of the batsmen's standing in the game. (Not to downplay Vengsarkar's achievements. He did play 116 Tests, scoring 6868 runs at 42.13 in an era when batsmen really were tested.)

Now the rankings don't give him the numbers he wants, P4S doesn't like them any more.

What a surprise!


If the ICC put me in charge of the rankings, I would do separate FTB and fair-Test-condition ranking. How exactly to make an FTB score is tricky, of course. But we now at least have pitch data, etc.

[Donny]

... put you in charge ?

Humans aren't involved, other than to see the ratings are updated.

[K]

... put you in charge ?

Humans aren't involved, other than to see the ratings are updated.

I've explained this before!

Of course, humans are involved! Just because they are nameless doesn't mean they are not involved! It's actually much worse that they are nameless, because anyone vaguely qualified to make a valiant attempt at such a task would not do it anonymously. But sadly people seem to think the opposite. DLS is the prime example. We know who D, L and S are. People love criticising DLS. DLS is a thousand times more trustworthy than silly ICC player rankings by people we don't know. "Put in charge" for rain calculations means that D&L, and now S, who took over in 2014, are in charge. It doesn't mean they tamper with the formula during a game to benefit England or Oz. But it does mean that humans are involved! How could humans possibly not be involved?


It's a made-up ranking. See what I wrote above. It's like the Ritchie Benaud Rule -- except more complicated and hidden from everyone. It's made up by humans. Everything a computer spits out ultimately is made by humans. Humans give the computer instructions. There is no real artificial intelligence so that the computer can instruct itself.

This is made up. Repeat: this is made up. This is made up.


That doesn't mean everything made up is bad. Some made up things can be good. But you need good reasons to put your trust in made up things. There are no good reasons (or any reasons at all) to trust rankings like this.

[Donny]

You need to read up on how the ICC Ratings are determined, K (and Lazza ). https://www.icc-cricket.com/rankings/me ... kings/test

It's not some human's opinion - as you seem to think.

[Donny]

"The value of each player’s performance within a match is calculated using an algorithm, a series of calculations (all pre-programmed) based on various circumstances in the match. There is no human intervention in this calculation process, and no subjective assessment is made"

From the ICC site.

[K]

I have already. Years ago... when you first linked them. (Thanks for linking.)

It's exactly how I said it above. Exactly.

"There is no intervention in the calculation process" is true. But the humans determined what was being calculated. And the only way they did that was by playing around and producing something that matched what they thought made sense.

And, unlike, DLS, those humans are probably not qualified to do anything, let alone a far harder task than what DLS did/do.