On 5 May 2023, Pakistan did something no Pakistan team had managed in the eighteen years since the official ICC ODI rankings began in January 2005: they climbed to No. 1 in the world. A 102-run win over New Zealand in the fourth one-day international in Karachi lifted Babar Azam’s side to the top of the one-day rankings for the first time in the team’s history, a landmark that lasted only two days but ended a wait of nearly two decades.
The stay at the summit was brief, and the story is told honestly here, because the honest version is remarkable enough. Pakistan rose from fifth place, overtook Australia and India by the narrowest of margins, and then slipped back to third when New Zealand won the fifth match of the series. For two days in May 2023, though, the world rankings had a new name at the top, and it was Pakistan’s.
How the ICC ODI rankings table looked on 5 May 2023
The numbers show how fine the margins were. Pakistan’s win in Karachi took their rating to 113.483, a fraction ahead of Australia on 113.286 and India on 112.638, so the top three teams in the world were separated by less than a single rating point. In the rounded figures published at the time the three sides looked level, and it was the decimal points underneath that put Pakistan first.
The ICC’s team rankings, devised by the statistician David Kendrix and introduced as the official system in January 2005, rate sides on their results over a rolling period of three to four years, with recent matches carrying the most weight. Because the table is recalculated after every match, a single defeat can move a team several places when the leading sides are separated by fractions of a point, which is exactly what happened to Pakistan two days later. The side had spent the whole of the rankings era chasing the summit: before May 2023 their best position had been third, reached in January 2007 and again in June 2022, and they began the New Zealand series down in fifth place with a rating of 106. Four straight wins changed all of that.
The home series that carried Pakistan to the top
The five-match series against New Zealand began in Rawalpindi in late April 2023, with the visitors ranked second in the world and Pakistan fifth. In the first match on 27 April, New Zealand made 288 for 7, and Pakistan chased the target down with nine balls to spare, Fakhar Zaman scoring 117 from 114 balls in a five-wicket win.
Two days later came one of the great ODI chases. New Zealand posted 336 for 5, a total that would usually be safe, but Fakhar Zaman produced a career-best 180 not out from 144 balls and Pakistan reached the target with ten balls remaining, winning by seven wickets. It was the second-highest successful run chase in Pakistan’s ODI history, and home supporters began to sense that a special series was unfolding.
The teams moved to Karachi for the last three matches. In the third, on 3 May, Pakistan made 287 for 6, Imam-ul-Haq top-scoring with 90 from 107 balls and Babar Azam adding 54, then bowled New Zealand out for 261, Cole McConchie resisting with 64 not out on his ODI debut, to win by 26 runs. The victory sealed the series with two games to spare and gave Pakistan their first ODI series win over New Zealand in twelve years.
The fourth match, on 5 May, was the one that changed the rankings. It is remembered most for the captain, who became the fastest player in history to 5,000 ODI runs during the same game, a record told in full in our article on Babar Azam’s fastest 5,000 ODI runs record. For the team, the 102-run victory was the result that carried Pakistan to No. 1.
R E A D M O R E
Babar Azam: The Fastest to 5,000 ODI Runs in Cricket History
Two days at the top of the ICC ODI rankings
Pakistan’s first reign lasted one match. In the fifth ODI in Karachi on 7 May, New Zealand batted first and made 299, Will Young scoring 87 and captain Tom Latham 59, while Henry Shipley took 3 for 34 and was named Player of the Match. Pakistan’s chase never recovered from losing early wickets, and although Iftikhar Ahmed fought to the end with 94 not out from 72 balls, the side was bowled out for 252 in the 47th over, losing by 47 runs.
The defeat dropped Pakistan from first to third, with Australia returning to the top. The first stay at No. 1 had lasted exactly two days. It would be wrong to dress that up as a long reign, but the barrier had been broken: a Pakistan team had finally stood at the top of a table that had existed since 2005, and every player in the squad knew the way back.
The National Stadium in Karachi, where the last three matches of the 2023 series were played and where Pakistan’s win on 5 May 2023 took them to No. 1 in the world.
Photo: Nomi887, Wikimedia Commons
Back on top twice more before the year was out
The story did not end in May. On 26 August 2023, Pakistan completed a 3-0 series sweep of Afghanistan, winning the third match by 59 runs in Sri Lanka, and climbed back to No. 1 in the ICC ODI rankings just before the Asia Cup. Then, on 17 September 2023, they returned to the top once more: their rating of 115, built from 3,102 points in 27 matches, edged them ahead of India on decimal points after Australia lost their series in South Africa 3-2.
That stay lasted five days. India beat Australia on 22 September 2023 and took over at No. 1, holding the position into the World Cup that followed. Even so, Pakistan had reached the summit three times in the space of five months, after eighteen years of never reaching it at all, and each return showed the first climb had been no accident.
Why a brief first stay at No. 1 still matters
Rankings reward consistency over years, which is why the top spot had proved so hard to reach. Pakistan’s rise in 2023 rested on series wins built at home, a settled side, and a captain who was also the world’s No. 1 ODI batter at the time, a position Babar Azam held for two years. The two-day first stay is best read as the moment a long climb was completed: the same group of players went back to the top twice more within months.
Pakistan’s players have kept troubling the top of the world tables since. Saim Ayub’s rise to No. 1 in the T20I all-rounder rankings put another Pakistani name at a summit, and the young all-rounder Maaz Sadaqat’s climb in the T20I rankings shows the next generation following the same path. The ODI team’s first No. 1 remains the landmark they are all measured against: proof that Pakistan have stood above every other team in world one-day cricket.
R E A D M O R E
Pakistan Climb to Fourth in ICC ODI Rankings After Tri-Series Triumph
Sources
- Pakistan topple Australia to become No. 1 ODI team: CricTracker
- Pakistan vs New Zealand 4th ODI highlights: Sportstar
- Fakhar Zaman smashes 180 in record chase: Geo News
- Blackcaps fight back in Karachi: New Zealand Cricket
- Explained: how do the ICC rankings work: Wisden
- India take over at No. 1: cricket.com.au
- Featured photo: India vs Pakistan at the 2023 Cricket World Cup, by Pantman2, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Body photo: Enclosures at the National Stadium, Karachi, by Nomi887, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Umar Farooq is the founder and editor of Good News Pakistan. An engineer by profession and a writer by passion, he started the site in December 2022 to share good news from Pakistan, and has since written and edited more than 200 articles about its people, sports, science, business and world records. He believes the story of Pakistan is bigger than its headlines, and that good news, told honestly, is worth telling every day.