Cummins soars to all-time high as Test allrounder

He's been among the premier fast bowlers of his era for years - but maybe now it really is time to also hail Australia captain Pat Cummins for being a genuine world-class allrounder too.

For in the first ICC rankings update for 2025 following Cummins' tremendous Boxing Day Test success against India, the skipper has not only risen from fourth to third in the bowling list with his six-wicket haul in the dramatic win at the MCG.

Cummins, at the age of 31, also soared four spots to a career-high third-place in the Test allrounder rankings thanks to his valuable knocks of 49 and 41 that helped his side to their 184-run triumph.

His ranking of 283 points has bettered the fifth position he attained in August 2019 and puts him behind only Bangladesh's Mehidy Hasan (284) and India's Ravindra Jadeja (405) in the list of top allrounders, while both innings have also helped him enter the list of the top-100 batters, in 97th place.

Cummins, last year's Sir Garfield Sobers award winner as world men's cricketer of the year, took three wickets in each innings to edge him into third position in the bowling charts with 837 rating points.

That's six points behind teammate Josh Hazlewood with India superstar Jasprit Bumrah moving on to highest ever points-rating achieved by an India bowler at the top of the rankings.

Bumrah's nine-wicket match haul in Melbourne ensured the pace ace soared from his previous tied-high of 904 points with Ravichandran Ashwin to a new landmark of 907. 

It puts him joint-17th in the all-time list of Test bowlers, in a list headed by two Englishmen - Sydney Barnes (932) and George Lohmann (931) - who played more than a century ago. 

Cummins and Glenn McGrath are the top Aussies on that list, in joint-fifth on 914 points at their peak.

Steve Smith has moved up three places in the Test batting rankings to seventh after his 140 against India (763 points), two spots behind the leading Australian Travis Head (780) while English maestro Joe Root still leads the way on 895.

NRMA Insurance Men's Test Series v India

First Test: India won by 295 runs

Second Test: Australia won by 10 wickets

Third Test: Match drawn

Fourth Test: Australia won by 184 runs

Fifth Test: January 3-7: SCG, Sydney, 10.30am AEDT

Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Sean Abbott, Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Travis Head (vc), Usman Khawaja, Sam Konstas, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Marsh, Jhye Richardson, Steve Smith (vc), Mitchell Starc, Beau Webster

India squad: Rohit Sharma (c), Jasprit Bumrah (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Devdutt Padikkal, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant, Sarfaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Siraj, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Harshit Rana, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar. Reserves: Mukesh Kumar, Navdeep Saini, Khaleel Ahmed, Yash Dayal