ESPNcricinfo staff
Quinton de Kock’s 96 in the first innings of the second Test, after he scored 141* in the first, against West Indies has put him back in the top ten – at No. 10 – in the Test rankings for batters.
He was last in the top ten back in December 2019, but after top-scoring with 237 runs in the two-Test series, which South Africa won 2-0, he has moved above Babar Azam and Dimuth Karunaratne.
Rassie van der Dussen was a distant second to de Kock in the run-scorers list, with 125 runs, while
Jermaine Blackwood was third with 88 and Dean Elgar fourth, with 87, and the three of them made gains on the table too: Elgar was up one spot to No. 19, van der Dussen up 31 spots to No. 43, and Blackwood one place behind him at No. 44, a rise of 12 positions.
Jason Holder started the series as the top-ranked allrounder in Tests but average returns – 34 runs in four innings and six wickets (four of them in the first, which was before the period used in the latest rankings) – have pushed him down to second place behind Ravindra Jadeja, who is currently playing the World Test Championship final against New Zealand in Southampton.
Kagiso Rabada was the player of the match in the second Test for his haul of five wickets, and moved up one place to sixth as a result, while Keshav Maharaj’s seven wickets, including a hat-trick, helped him go three places up to 28th. Lungi Ngidi also picked up three wickets in the game and went up three places to No. 41.
Kemar Roach was by far the best West Indies bowler on show, returning 3 for 45 and 4 for 52, and that took him close to the top ten for bowlers, as he finished at 12th place.