Dhoni, Yuvraj share top honours in ICC rankings by CricketArchive Staff Reporter

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Player:

G Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, MS Dhoni

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DateLine: 6th July 2009

 

Indian players Yuvraj Singh and Mahendra Singh Dhoni shared top honours in the ICC ODI rankings as left-hander

 

Yuvraj Singh moved on to a career-best second place and the rankings were topped by his captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

 

The Indian team though, despite winning the ODI series against West Indies, missed a chance to reclaim the second spot in the ICC ODI Championship and remained third.

 

India needed to win all their matches against the West Indies but they went down in the second tie at Sabina Park even though it could not deny them a 2-1 series win in the Caribbeans.

 

Yuvraj had scores of 131, 35 and 2 in the three matches of the series. This contribution helped him jump two places and the dashing Indian middle-order batsman now sits behind Dhoni who has consolidated his number one position.

 

Dhoni, whose place was under threat from Chris Gayle, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Yuvraj, produced a consistent performance to strengthen his position at the top.

 

The wicketkeeper-batsman made scores of 41, 95 and 46 not out to walk away with the player of the series award. Dhoni now leads Yuvraj by a comfortable 44-point margin.

 

The battle for the top spot between Yuvraj and Dhoni though would resume in September when India play Sri Lanka and New Zealand in a proposed tri-series in Sri Lanka.

 

Yuvraj's leap by two places means Chanderpaul and Gayle have dropped one place each to the third and fourth places respectively.

 

But all was not good for Indian players as opener Gautam Gambhir slipped four places to share 20th spot with New Zealand's Ross Taylor. Gambhir scored only 57 runs in the series against West Indies with his highest score being 44 in the third ODI at St Lucia.

 

In the bowling charts, Indian off-spinner Harbhajan Singh lost three places to 26th while Praveen Kumar dropped six places to 33rd.

 

Ishant Sharma, however, managed to move up two rungs to 39th.