ESWATINI ONE PLACE DOWN IN CRICKET RANKINGS

MBABANE – Eswatini Men’s Twenty 20 International (T20I) has slightly dropped in the latest global cricket rankings.

According to the International Cricket Council (ICC) rankings updated yesterday, the country is ranked 83 out of 85 nations resulting from its 18 games. They are a better side than Estonia and Cameroon, who are occupying the bottom places. India remained the global kings of the sport, while South Africa reigns in the continent. The Delisa Malinga-led team has had the 82nd rank for a couple of times this year, in September and last week Thursday.

The men’s team is fresh from the 2023 World Cup sub-region Africa B qualifiers, which ended on December 10 in Rwanda. They achieved the sixth rank out of eight teams in their pool, thus falling short of progressing to the qualifiers’ finals.  Meanwhile, the coach described the descending as an unfortunate incident compared with the team’s performance. “The rankings do not reflect our performance. There was a lot of improvement in the team as compared to the previous tournaments and these improvements were observed in terms of taking wickets, making runs and low margin score lines against top sides Tanzania and Nigeria,” Malinga said.

Eswatini succeeded in beating Gambia, who is ranked 74th  while also recording a draw against Cameroon as the game was abandoned due to rain on December 8. Malinga also lamented that his team only had the ICC tournaments to improve its ranks and get more points. He believed that the team needed to be more active through getting more involved in international games such as bilateral series and strengthening the grassroots. Otherwise, he was optimistic that they would turn the tide. Noteworthy is that team rankings are worked out by comparing the batting average with points instead of total runs scored.

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: