Bangladesh looks to close gap on West Indies in ICC ODI Championship

Dubai, July 24 (ANI): A confident Bangladesh side can reduce the gap between it and the West Indies by 12 ratings points in the Reliance Mobile ICC ODI Championship if it manages to win the upcoming ODI series in the Caribbean 3-0.

At present, the West Indies occupies eighth position some 14 points behind Sri Lanka in seventh but it would lose six points were it to go down in each match of the three-ODI series. At the same time, ninth-placed Bangladesh would gain six moving it to 52 points and giving it further breathing space over Ireland in 10th position.

Because of the sizable gap between the teams West Indies will only gain one ratings point for a clean sweep of wins in the series and equally Bangladesh can only lose a maximum of one point. Bangladesh will take confidence going into the ODIs having beaten the home side 2-0 in the Test series recently albeit against a much weakened team.

But a glance at the Reliance Mobile ICC Player Rankings demonstrates how far ahead the West Indies is, provided of course it is able to field a full team for the ODIs.

Batting-wise, there are two West Indians, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Chris Gayle in the top five and another, Ramnaresh Sarwan in the top 20. Meanwhile, the highest-ranked Bangladesh batsman is Shakib Al Hasan in 34th position.

Shakib, however, does feature in the bowling rankings in fifth position. He and Mashrafe Mortaza (in eighth place) are the only Bangladesh representatives in the top 30 while the West Indies can boast three players in that category, Jerome Taylor (15th place), Daren Powell (23rd place) and Dwayne Bravo (29th place) so the honours are much more even with the ball.

The all-rounders' list is headed by Shakib so he will be looking to hang on to his number-one spot. The only other player from the top 10 likely to make an appearance in this series is Gayle in ninth position. (ANI)