The ICC ODI Championship is an international One Day International cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 competition run by the International Cricket Council

International Cricket Council

The International Cricket Council is the international governing body of cricket. It was founded as the Imperial Cricket Conference in 1909 by representatives from England, Australia and South Africa, renamed the International Cricket Conference in 1965, and took up its current name in 1989.The...

. The competition is notional in that it is simply a ranking scheme overlaid on the regular ODI match schedule. After every ODI match, the two teams involved receive points based on a mathematical formula. The total of each team's points total is divided by the total number of matches to give a rating, and all teams are ranked on a table in order of rating.

By analogy to cricket batting average

Batting average

Batting average is a statistic in both cricket and baseball that measures the performance of cricket batsmen and baseball hitters. The two statistics are related in that baseball averages are directly descended from the concept of cricket averages.- Cricket :...

s, the points for winning an ODI match are always greater than the team's rating, increasing the rating, and the points for losing an ODI match are always less than the rating, reducing the rating. A drawn match between higher and lower rated teams will benefits the lower-rated team at the expense of the higher-rated team. An "average" team that wins as often as it loses while playing a mix of stronger and weaker teams should have a rating of 100.

As of 11 September 2011, Australia lead the ICC ODI Championship with a rating of 130, while the lowest rated team, Kenya, has a rating of 0.

Qualification

The championship consists of two separate ranking tables. The ten ICC Full Members that play Test cricket

Test cricket

Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

 are automatically listed on the main table. The six Associate Members with One Day International status are listed on a secondary table, but are eligible for promotion to the main table by meeting one of the following criteria:

• two wins in ODIs against Full Members
• one win in an ODI against a Full Member and also have won more than 60% of qualifying matches versus other Associates

Ireland qualified for the main table following their victories over Pakistan and Bangladesh in the 2007 World Cup

2007 Cricket World Cup

The 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup was the ninth edition of the ICC Cricket World Cup tournament that took place in the West Indies from 13 March to 28 April 2007, using the sport's One Day International format...

,. and the Netherlands qualified in 2010 by beating Bangladesh. Kenya are also listed on the main table as they previously had permanent ODI status.

Points

The calculations for the Table are performed as follows:

• Each team scores points based on the results of their matches.
• Each team's rating is equal to its total points scored divided by the total matches played. (Series are not significant in these calculations).
• A match only counts if played in the last three years.
• Matches played in the first year of the three-year limit count one-third; matches played in the second year count two-thirds; matches played in the last year count fully; essentially, recent matches are given higher weighting.
• To determine a team's rating after a particular match:
  • Determine the match result (win, loss, or tie)
  • Calculate the match points scored:
    • If the gap between the ratings of the two teams at the commencement of the match is fewer than 40 points, then:
      • The winner scores 50 points more than the opponent's rating
      • The loser scores 50 points fewer than the opponent's rating
      • Each team in a tie scores the opponent's rating
    • If the gap between the ratings of the two teams at the commencement of the match is more than or equal to 40 points, then :
      • The winner, if it is the stronger team, scores 10 points more than its own rating
      • The winner, if it is the weaker team, scores 90 points more than its own rating
      • The loser, if it is the stronger team, scores 90 points fewer than its own rating
      • The loser, if it is the weaker team, scores 10 points fewer than its own rating
      • The stronger team in a tie scores 40 points fewer than its own rating
      • The weaker team in a tie scores 40 points more than its own rating
  • Add the match points scored to the points already scored (in previous matches as reflected by the Table) and determine the new rating. However, matches(and the points) which do not lie in last three year range will have to be removed.

• Points earned by teams depend on the opponents ratings, therefore this system needed to assign base ratings to teams when it started.

Associate rankings

In late 2005, the International Cricket Council

International Cricket Council

The International Cricket Council is the international governing body of cricket. It was founded as the Imperial Cricket Conference in 1909 by representatives from England, Australia and South Africa, renamed the International Cricket Conference in 1965, and took up its current name in 1989.The...

 ranked the top non-Test nations from 11-30 to complement the Test

Test cricket

Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

 nations' rankings in the ICC ODI Championship. The ICC used the results from the 2005 ICC Trophy

2005 ICC Trophy

Ireland beat Bermuda easily as Ed Joyce made 103 for the hosts in Stormont.----Denmark beat Uganda by 28 runs as Thomas Munkholt Hansen took 6 for 30 to carry Denmark to a 28-run win over Uganda in Muckamore. Denmark made 197 with Henrik Saxe Hansen making 71...

 and WCQS Division 2 competition (i.e. the primary qualification mechanisms for the 2007 Cricket World Cup

2007 Cricket World Cup

The 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup was the ninth edition of the ICC Cricket World Cup tournament that took place in the West Indies from 13 March to 28 April 2007, using the sport's One Day International format...

) to rank the nations.

These rankings were used to seed the initial stage of the global World Cricket League. Teams ranked 11-16 were placed into Division 1; teams 17-20 were placed into Division 2; teams 21-24 were placed into Division 3; the remaining teams were placed into the upper divisions of their respective regional qualifiers.

As of 19 April 2009 the top six associates/affiliates gained one day status. Kenya and Ireland have both qualified to appear on the main rating table, Kenya from its existing status and Ireland for its two victories in the 2007 World Cup. Following their victory over Bangladesh in July 2010, the Netherlands joined the main table. Afghanistan, Canada and Scotland remain on the secondary table. In May 2009, the ICC added a rankings table for all associate and affiliate members. This contained both global and regional placings.

Associate rankings as at 14 October 2009 according to ICC:

Rank	Nation	Regional Rank
14		Asia No. 1 Associate/Affiliate member
15		Europe 3
16		Americas No.1 Associate/Affiliate member
17		Asia 2
18		Africa 2
19		Americas 2
20		Africa 3
21		Asia 3
22		Europe 4
23		East Asia - Pacific No.1 Associate/Affiliate member
24		Asia 4
25		Americas 3
26		Americas 4
27		Europe 5
28		Africa 4
29		EAP 2
30		Europe 6
31		Asia 5
32		Americas 5
33		Asia 6
34		Asia 7
35		Europe 7
36		Asia 8
37		Africa 5
38		Europe 8
39		Africa 6
40		EAP 3
41		Americas 6
42		Europe 9

Historical ICC ODI Champions

The ICC provides ratings for the end of each month back to October 2002. This table lists the teams that have successively held the highest rating since that date, by whole month periods.

Team	Start	End	Total Months	Cumulative Months	Highest Rating
	October 2002	January 2007	52	52	140
	February 2007	February 2007	1	1	128
	March 2007	February 2008	12	64	130
	March 2008	May 2008	3	4	127
	June 2008	December 2008	7	71	131
	January 2009	August 2009	8	12	127
	September 2009	present	26	97	134
Reference: ICC Rankings

See also

• ICC Test Championship
  ICC Test Championship
  The ICC Test Championship is an international competition run by the International Cricket Council in the sport of cricket for the 10 teams that play Test cricket...
  
  
• ICC T20 Championship
• International structure of cricket
  International structure of cricket
  There was no formal structure of international cricket until the early twenty first century. It had long been traditional for countries, without any intervention from a body such as the International Cricket Council , to organize for themselves the various cricket matches...
  
  
• ICC Player Rankings

External links

• ICC ODI Championship