Matt Henry ended a 36-year-old drought for New Zealand as he became just the third Kiwi bowler to be ranked World No.1 in the ICC Test rankings, as per the latest ICC update. He joins India's Jasprit Bumrah at the top of the chart after his record-breaking 11-wicket match haul during the second Test against England.
Meanwhile, Joe Root has become the World No.1 Test batter again after scoring 77 in the second Oval Test, jumping two spots from third to the pinnacle of the tally. Root was the stand-in captain for the Oval Test after Ben Stokes was dropped for the nightclub incident. He made 46 and 77 in the two innings and became just the second player to reach 14,000 runs in Test cricket. With that, Root now needs fewer than 1900 runs to break Sachin Tendulkar’s tally of most runs in Test cricket.
Henry ripped apart the England batting line-up with five-wicket hauls in both innings to power New Zealand to a dominating win over England in the second Test match at The Oval. After picking up a sole wicket in New Zealand's 115-run loss in the first Test at Lord's, Henry put up jaw-dropping performances for the Blackcaps with a 11/109 match haul to help the visitors win the second Test by a huge margin of 253 runs. Henry finished with a six-wicket innings haul and an 11-wicket match haul. His 11/109 is now the best figures by a New Zealand player in England in a match, going past the previous best of Dion Nash, who took 11/169 at the Lord's Test.
Henry has become just the third New Zealand bowler to be ranked No.1 in the Test rankings after Jack Cowie (1947) and Richard Hadlee (1984-1990). There were more movements in the Test rankings as Rachin Ravindra jumped two spots to 10th after his 46 and 76 in the two innings at the Oval Test. Daryl Mitchell scaled five spots to 16th, Glenn Phillips (up eight spots to 31st) and Henry Nicholls (up 13 slots to 40th) all made ground following some impressive efforts with the bat of late.
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