Gayle shines again

Gayle shines again
AP Photo/Lynne Sladky

West Indies batsman Chris Gayle regained his place as the team’s top rated batsman in ODIs after his string of good scores, which carried him up to ll places to 21st in the latest ICC Rankings.

Gayle, who endured a 14-month absence from international cricket, has scored 252 runs in four innings (Average: 84.0) since returning against England.

Meanwhile, Marlon Samuels leaped froged 15 batsmen to go to 67th position following scores of l0l not out, 11 and 42 in the recent series against New Zealand and Andre Russell, who hit an unbeaten 42 and 59 not out in his two innings, jumped from 63rd to 54th.

Keiron Pollard (34th), Lendl Simmons (69th) and Dwayne Bravo (82nd) are the other active batsmen in the top l00.

At the top of the list are South Africans Hasim Amla (871 points) and AB De Villiers (851), Indian Virat Kholi and Sri Lanka Sangakkaran (757).

In the Test rankings, West Indies left-handed middle order batsman Shivnarine Chanderpaul has moved off the top of the ICC ‘s Test rankings.

He has been replaced by Sri Lankan Kumar Sangakkara. He crept ahead of Chanderpaul to move to 892 rating points. Chanderpaul is 36 points adrift in second, with South African AB De Villiers in third on 821 points.

Sangakkara struck a superb 192 in the recently drawn Test against Pakistan in Colombo to earn 42 points.