Players' strides up rankings charts bodes well for Australia

Under new coach Justin Langer and emerging from a tumultuous period, Australia's losses have included the one-off T20I against England and the tri-series final in Zimbabwe against Pakistan. But, a look at the names in their scoresheet and the numbers against them has been promising.

When a new-look T20I side beat England and New Zealand for the Trans-Tasman tri-series title earlier in the year, they jumped from seventh in the MRF Tyres ICC T20I Team Rankings to No.2.

In Zimbabwe, they had a chance to take the No.1 ranking from Pakistan. While they missed out on that, they had several members of their inexperienced side make strides up the rankings and record charts.

Aaron Finch, leading from the front, notched up the highest ever T20I score of 172 and stormed to No.1 in the batting charts.

D'Arcy Short, his opening partner, jumped 18 places and broke into the top 10 with two 40-plus scores.

The bowlers were led by the experienced Andrew Tye, who rose 41 places to No.7. Billy Stanlake made it into the top 20 as well, rising 60 places to No.19 with career-best points after a series that began with him taking 4/8.

Australia’s biggest weapon this year has proved to be Ashton Agar, who shot up 39 places to 45 among bowlers, while also finding a place at No.56 on the all-rounders' chart, a leap of 52.

Glenn Maxwell remains the No.1 all-rounder, but Agar, Tye (No.62, up 59 places) and Marcus Stoinis (up 62 to No.74) have showed that Australia have valuable all-rounders-in-the-making climbing the ladder.

Langer admitted that the team would continue to have a “really, really close look at everything we're doing”, but hailed the positives in the recent month.

"Finchy has definitely put his best foot forward in this series,” he said, backing the T20I captain for one-day international captaincy as well.

Short, he said, was a “dynamic” player. “As we saw from Pakistan [in the final], you've got to play fearless cricket. D'Arcy started taking steps towards that today, like we've seen from him in Big Bash cricket. That's how he needs to play his cricket.”

Praising the bowlers, Langer expected them to get better with experience. "I think looking at the bigger picture, I was very impressed with the way Jhye Richardson and Billy Stanlake stood up today. They're both really young cricketers … Billy's been good throughout the series.”

Australia, for all their international success, have never won the ICC World T20 crown. With the next men’s event in 2020 at home, they will be optimistic that they have the building blocks to a strong team.

"To have a couple of experienced guys who are playing well, like Glenn Maxwell, Finchy and AJ Tye is awesome," said Langer. "In a great team you've usually got eight of those sort of players with a couple of younger players. We've probably got three experienced players with eight very inexperienced players.

“So the balance isn't quite right at the moment, but hopefully moving forward we'll get that balance back as we usually have in an Australian cricket team."