England and Australia had points deducted from their tally due to a slow over-rate in the Ashes series, which has affected the World Test Championship (WTC) 2023-25 standings. As per ICC, the gap at the top of the ICC World Test Championship standings has further widened significantly after England and Australia were hit with sanctions at the end of the Ashes. England has docked 19 points and Australia 10 points as a penalty for slow over-rate across the series as they fell further down the WTC25 standings.
As a result, Asian neighbors Pakistan and India lead the way in the standings, firmly occupying the top two spots after an unbeaten start to WTC25.
Pakistan has made a perfect start to the 2023-25 campaign with a point percentage of 100 after their clean sweep against Sri Lanka. After a closely fought first Test, Babar Azam’s men dominated the hosts with a thumping innings victory in the second Test to seal a 2-0 series win.
Saud Shakeel (295 runs in three innings including a double century), Agha Salman (221 runs in three innings with one century, fifty), Abdullah Shafique (228 runs in three innings including a double century), Abrar Ahmed (10 wickets) and Naseem Shah (nine wickets) were some of the stars for Pakistan throughout the series.
Closely tailing them is India in the second spot with 66.66 percent, who have a win and a draw against their name after their series against West Indies. India set the tone with a massive innings win in the first Test but rain dampened their hopes of a clean sweep in the second Test that ended in stalemate.
Debutant Yashasvi Jaiswal (266 runs in three innings including a century, fifty), Rohit Sharma (240 runs in three innings, including a century, two fifties), Virat Kohli (197 runs in two innings including a century and fifty), Ravichandran Ashwin (15 wickets and one half-century) and Ravindra Jadeja (seven wickets and one half-century) were the top performers for India.
Before the sanctions, England and Australia had 26 points each and a point percentage of 43.33. After the penalties, Australia dropped to 30 percent while England plummeted to 15 percent, taking them below West Indies at 16.67 percent.
Having been whitewashed 2-0 at home, Sri Lanka are at the bottom with 0 points. Bangladesh, New Zealand, and South Africa are yet to kickstart their campaign in the current iteration of the World Test Championship.
Adding to the misery, Australia lost their top spot in the ICC Men’s Test Rankings as England made an impressive comeback from 2-0 to 2-2 in the Ashes. Tied on 118 points, India is on top on decimal points (118.4 points) as Australia (117.8) drops to second.
England are closing in on top after gaining one point from the drawn series, moving to 115 points.
