You are all Wrong about the Rankings (again)

2027 World Cup Qualification and the ODI rankings race

The following all falls somewhat outside the remit of the nascent substack, being concerned almost entirely with matters affecting Full Members of the ICC, but it touches on qualification and thus pathways and thus just about sneaks into the purview of this newsletter. Also, as the internet’s leading/only expert on ICC rankings I just can’t help but weigh in here.

The subject at hand is the race for direct qualification for the 2027 Men’s ODI World Cup, which will be determined in part by the ICC ODI rankings. There has been an awful lot written on this subject, and pretty much all of it has been embarrassingly innumerate and all of it consistently wrong. The currently published process dictates that there will be ten* direct qualifiers; namely the two full member hosts in South Africa and Zimbabwe, along with the eight other best-ranked teams on the ODI table at the cut-off date, with the remaining two full members joining the top four Associates from CWC League 2, along with four more winning through from the repechage CWC World Cup Qualifier Playoff (likely this December), at the World Cup Qualifier (early next year) to contend for the remaining four** spots.

The first point that should be made is that the widely reported March 31^st cut-off is not credible. It is of course entirely up to you, dear reader, whether you believe Sky Sports, Wikipedia, Cricinfo, Cricbuzz, The Cricketer, The Guardian, Wisden (repeatedly), Times of India and indeed basically the entire cricket press - or me, your humble correspondent. All I can say is that I’m pretty sure I’m right and I’m entirely sure they’re all wrong, because we can’t very well have a cut-off after the Qualifier. Obviously. I am all but certain that the correct date is in fact September 30^th of this year. The rest of this article is predicated on that being the case so if you don’t think it is, read no further.

So what is the state of play?

Well with Zimbabwe safe by dint of hosting rights, the magic number is currently 9***. Bangladesh are currently 9^th, West Indies currently 10^th, with Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and England hovering above Bangladesh and Ireland a fair ways behind the West Indies. With Bangladesh’s ill-advised series against Zimbabwe having just concluded, there are at time of writing five series which remain relevant to the race: the ongoing 5-match series between the Windies and New Zealand, the 3-match series between England and India starting tomorrow, Afghanistan’s 5-match tour to Ireland, and 2 of the 3 ODIs between the Windies and India at the end of the summer (the last falling outside the cut-off).

And what does this mean?

Short answer: it’s pretty much a two horse race between Bangladesh and the Windies, and Bangladesh are well ahead.

Long answer: It’s a bit complicated, Afghanistan could just about drop into trouble, as could England if they really, really tried, and Ireland aren’t actually arithmetically out of it, but it’s pretty much a two horse race between Bangladesh and the Windies, and Bangladesh are well ahead.

Longest answer: read on for a team-by-team breakdown.

Bangladesh probably shouldn’t have played that series against Zimbabwe, but it could have been worse. If they’d not played it they would have been essentially safe on a rating of 86.75, the 1-2 defeat has left them on 83.36. They are still incumbents in 9th postion on the table, and should all other results go as expected they should be fine, but their fate is out of their hands now. The upcoming series against South Africa this winter will fall after the cut-off. They are still, at press time, fully 7.3 rating points ahead of the West Indies, and entirely out of reach of Ireland - those being only two teams that could threaten to displace them. And even if the Windies do manage to pass them, there’s still an outside chance Afghanistan or even England could just drop below them (though fairly remote, as we’ll see).

The West Indies are currently in 10th place, 7.3 points behind Bangladesh. By the time you read this that will likely have changed somewhat one way or the other, as they’re currently batting (badly) in their second ODI against New Zealand. They’ve three more against the Kiwis after this one, then a three match series against India, of which only the first two will matter. If the Windies sweep this series they will go past Bangladesh and be certain of staying ahead of them regardless of the outcome of the series against India (and indeed India’s series again England which has a slight bearing on the former). The simple calculation for the West Indies is in fact that to be ahead of Bangladesh at the cut off they can afford to lose no more than two games across these two relevant series against New Zealand and India - so every for game they lose against New Zealand they have to win one against India (specifically one of the first two) in order to pass Bangladesh. If they manage that they will be effectively safe. If not, they need to hope things go badly wrong for Afghanistan (or that the rules are changed, check the footnotes).

Afghanistan were basically safe before they agreed to this 5-match away series against Ireland in August. This series is frankly a lunatic one to play from a rankings perspective, perhaps madder even than Bangladesh’s ill-advised tour to Zimbabwe, and playing 5 specifically is particularly nutso. Losing 0-5, 1-4, or most combinations of 2-3 (depending on win-loss order) would now drop them below Bangladesh, and indeed losing 0-5 would also see Ireland overtake them. In the latter case they’d be in serious trouble, as it wouldn’t even require the West Indies to get on a bit of a run for Afghanistan to wind up at the Qualifier, and even a 1-4 result would mean the Windies could afford to drop one extra game and still pip the Afghans to the 9th spot.

For Ireland the calculation is incredibly simple really. Beat Afghanistan 5-0 and you’re past them. Then you just have to hope Windies don’t win more than one from here. It’s a long shot but then Ireland are a long way down the table, and only have any hope of making 9th because they’ve so few games on the board that every win moves them a lot more, thanks to a low denominator. By the time the series actually gets played though, the calculation may have changed substantially. By then there might be a real race for the 10th spot rather than the 9th, for reasons detailed in the footnotes.

Finally England are all but arithmetically safe, as they have been for a good while. Not quite entirely safe however, as they still have the most relevant games to play of any team in notional contention. Three losses against India followed by five losses against Sri Lanka could see them sink to 81.72 - below Bangladesh and potentially below the West Indies, should the latter win at least four of their remaining six (including today). That is just wildly unlikely, however, and even then might not be enough to condemn England to the Qualifier, because of the lede I’ve buried in the footnotes there.

_{*This is all on the assumption that there are still going to be 10 direct qualifiers for the 2027 World Cup, rather than 11. It is in fact my belief that there will be 11 (with only one further team picked through some trivesty of a qualification series) but that has not yet been confirmed. Yeah you heard it here first. 12 team World Cup. Oh also they’re messing with the T20 World Cup too. Like and subscribe!}

_{**It’s probably not going to be four though. It’ll be one.}

_{***actually probably 10}