Australia risk an embarrassing slide down the Test rankings if they’re unable to conquer Bangladesh in the upcoming two-match series.
Steve Smith’s side landed in India earlier this year with a chance of reclaiming top spot on the International Cricket Council’s charts.
Now they will tumble to No.6 if Bangladesh win both games during the two-Test series that starts on August 27.
The prospect of sitting above only Sri Lanka, West Indies, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe would hardly instil confidence ahead of this summer’s Ashes.
Such a fall from grace is unlikely but far from impossible.
Bangladesh, who defeated England at home in 2016, are no longer the hapless easy-beats that Jason Gillespie memorably mauled during his unbeaten double century in Chittagong some 11 years ago.
“It’ll be hard and I don’t think they believe it will be anything but hard,” former Australia skipper Ian Chappell said.
“Not so much because of the pay dispute, it’ll be hard because the conditions there are difficult and in the last 12-18 months Bangladesh have really improved.”
“This will be a difficult tour.”
It will be Australia’s first outing since the bitter pay saga came to a head, partly because of players’ refusal to tour Bangladesh without an agreement.
Smith and the vast majority of his teammates haven’t donned the whites since losing a four-Test series in India some four months ago.
Some Test squad members were slated to tour South Africa with Australia A last month but that trip was boycotted amid the industrial standoff.
“It obviously took a bit longer than both parties would want. Certainly as a coach, you wanted it sorted a bit quicker,” coach Darren Lehmann told radio station Triple M, when asked about the dispute.
“It was a little bit frosty wasn’t it? But they’ll certainly get back together.
“Now the challenge for us is to play some bloody good cricket … and entertain the fans, get the fans back on side.”
Australia snapped a nine-Test losing streak in Asia with a shock victory over India in Pune in February. They were competitive throughout that series in a 2-1 loss.
The Test squad, including recent additions Mitchell Swepson and Jackson Bird, will head to Darwin for a pre-tour training camp later this week.
Todd Shand
Guest
Well don't watch it then. Surely you have a button on the remote that changes channels and another one that says On/Off
AGordon
Guest
This rankings thing is a bit of 'ho hum" isn't it? As Chris Kettlewell pojnted out, there are a raft of factors that can affect this. I seem to recall when Warney and McGrath were at the top of their powers, they slipped down the world rankings because they didn't play a Test for more than 6 months. They soon sorted that out in the next Australian summer. If you play with the ICC world ranking predictor, Australia would drop to 6, BUT if they beat England 3 nil in Australia, they go to third. https://www.icc-cricket.com/rankings/mens/rankings-predictor/test
Chris Kettlewell
Roar Guru
It really just goes to show how close all the test rankings are at the moment. Most of the top half-dozen teams win at home and lose away. One of the reasons India are sitting on top is they've barely played a match in their last 25-30 tests out of the sub-continent. Once they play a few away series against non-subcontinental nations they'll probably lose a few test series and drop down the rankings a bit too. It's hard to see any nation at the moment rising to any sort of real dominance, so we'll probably see the situation of teams going up and down multiple ranking places with each test series for a while. That being said, I doubt Bangladesh will win this test series 2-0 anyway. Bangladesh has certainly improved, and it's very foreign conditions for the Australian team, but they certainly showed in India significant improvement over how they were in Sri Lanka, and I think Australia will probably prove too strong for Bangladesh. If there's anything for the quicks at all, Hazlewood will bowl well. Cummins will be a handful almost regardless of the conditions. Lyon's bowling in those conditions improved at lot through the course of the Indian tour, Smith is just a class act, and I think a few other batsmen will step up and support him well on this tour.
jameswm
Roar Guru
What will our ranking be if we win?