Test Cricket Elo Ratings (1877 to Current)

[srbhkshk]

Test team ratings inspired by Chess Elo calculations.




More info -

Team	Current Elo	Peak Elo	Peak Date	Min Elo	Min Date
Australia	94.8​	121.2​	02 January 2008​	62.0​	26 December 1986​
England	89.9​	117.4​	11 Aug 1890	58.9​	05 August 1993​
South Africa	84.1​	106.2​	22 February 2013​	67.8​	05 December 1952​
West Indies	66.9​	106.4​	11 April 1986​	51.4​	17 March 2006​
India	92.6​	105.2​	12 August 2017​	57.8​	12 December 1959​
New Zealand	79.9​	101.0​	18 June 2021​	51.8​	03 March 1956​
Pakistan	76.8​	92.0​	03 February 2012​	59.1​	16 October 1952​
Sri Lanka	72.6​	91.8​	16 November 2009​	50.8​	23 November 1990​
Zimbabwe	27.2​	58.1​	15 November 2001​	23.8​	21 October 2017​
Bangladesh	42.4​	58.0​	27 August 2017​	24.7​	17 October 2008​
Ireland	44.3​	48.0​	11 May 2018​	44.3​	24 July 2019​
Afghanistan	50.1​	55.3​	05 September 2019​	48.1​	02 March 2021​

Numbers are roughly intended to look like ICC ratings but obviously have no relation to them. England and Australia start at 100 Elo, any new team starts at the minimum of current teams - 5 unless that number is below 50 (start at 50 in that case).

 

[Sunil1z]

Congratulations for your work ( if it is yours).
Now please explain the methodology .

 

[srbhkshk]

Congratulations for your work ( if it is yours).
Now please explain the methodology .

It's just normal chess Elo calculations scaled to be used for Test team - essentially you get points when you win and lose points when you lose, the amount you win/lose depends on the strength difference between the two teams (so beating a higher value team nets you a lot more points compared to beating say Bangladesh), if it's a draw you lose points in case the opponents was lower rated and gain points if they were higher rated.

(If you want more detail - here's an explanation of Elo method - https://www.omnicalculator.com/sports/elo )

 

[srbhkshk]

General (mostly well known, some not so well known) pointers of interest -

1. Australia 00s blows away WI 80s as the best team ever.
2. SA were the best team in the world at the time of their ban, no team bar the Windies for a short time surpassed their level till they came back.
3. Eng(12) , SA(13) and Ind(17) were all really close in strength.
4. Pakistan has always sucked at cricket - I knew that beforehand as an Indian but it's good to see numbers confirming that.
5. Aus 80s were amazingly **** at cricket.
6. The English team - just like their nation and their batsmen peaked in pre-historic times and broke my excel formatting while I was calculating peaks.
7. Bar NZ being dogshit, 90s had really well matched teams in general - perhaps part of the reason why that decade is looked at fondly.
8. The closest fight between two teams for #1 was in 1957 between England and SA, separated by just 0.0014 points. Second closest was India and NZ in 2021 with 0.0037 points.
9. The biggest mis-match between #1 and #2 was Australia's peak - where they were ahead of #2 SA by 36 points.

 

[Teja.]

Love this and am interested to look into the it.

You are far more experienced about graphs than I could dream off () so this is more opinion than critique but my issue is the graph is extremely busy to read IMO. I think it would really help if you 2x or even 3x the size of the IMG so the individual lines are more distinct.

 

[Athlai]

Bold choice with keeping England grey with a grey background

 

[Spark]

Is there a way for you to turn this into some sort of online webapp or something that can be tracked and updated with new results? This seems to be a manifestly superior way to track Test rankings, even if there's no natural way to account for home/away.

EDIT: Also can you post the raw data somewhere?

EDIT2: I also think there's a better way to handle SA in the ban period IMO.

 

[srbhkshk]

You are far more experienced about graphs than I could dream off () so this is more opinion than critique but my issue is the graph is extremely busy to read IMO. I think it would really help if you 2x or even 3x the size of the IMG so the individual lines are more distinct.

Nah, this is a 100% valid critique - I just made it as long as I could without having to scroll in excel, but there's a ton of improvement possible here.

Bold choice with keeping England grey with a grey background

Talk to me after you have tried 20 times to see how you can handle all three of Eng , Ind and SL being blue - removed SL from the graph out of pure disgust and forgotten that there are consequences to changing background colors.

 

[Athlai]

I’d have 100% made England bright pink

 

[cnerd123]

Grey is absolutely the right colour for England given their drab history, weather, food and sense of humour

 

[Jarquis]

This is super cool.

re: colours. I am the only one who instinctively associated SA and PAK the other way around?

 

[srbhkshk]

Is there a way for you to turn this into some sort of online webapp or something that can be tracked and updated with new results? This seems to be a manifestly superior way to track Test rankings, even if there's no natural way to account for home/away.

EDIT: Also can you post the raw data somewhere?

EDIT2: I also think there's a better way to handle SA in the ban period IMO.

Fairly easy to create a R-Shiny app for this - I might look into it the next time I am bored. The raw data is just a minor web scrape from cricinfo - but I have attached the file anyway.

 

[Sunil1z]

How many Teams have crossed 100 points in your rating ?

For eg. Aus 1940 , Aus 1970 , Aus 2000

 

[BoyBrumby]

England peaked in the Victorian era.

Figures...

 

[Lillian Thomson]

It’s impossible to read the thread title without singing Mr Blue Sky.

 

[srbhkshk]

How many Teams have crossed 100 points in your rating ?

For eg. Aus 1940 , Aus 1970 , Aus 2000

Aus (1870s , 1880s , 1890s , 1900s , 1910s , 1920s , 30s , 40s , 50s , 60s[Just] , 00s , 10s[Just])
Eng ( 1870s , 1880s , 1890s , 1900s , 1910s , 1920s , 30s , 50s[Just] , 00s[Just] , 10s)
SA (10s)
WI (60s , 80s)
India (10s , 20s)
NZ (20s)

 

[Jack1]

Cricket ELO > Chess ELO.

 

[Coronis]

It must suck to be a West Indian fan, for tests at least

 

[Jack1]

It must suck to be a West Indian fan, for tests at least

Test Cricket.

 

[honestbharani]

Test team ratings inspired by Chess Elo calculations.

View attachment 33620


More info -

Team	Current Elo	Peak Elo	Peak Date	Min Elo	Min Date
Australia	94.8​	121.2​	02 January 2008​	62.0​	26 December 1986​
England	89.9​	117.4​	11 Aug 1890	58.9​	05 August 1993​
South Africa	84.1​	106.2​	22 February 2013​	67.8​	05 December 1952​
West Indies	66.9​	106.4​	11 April 1986​	51.4​	17 March 2006​
India	92.6​	105.2​	12 August 2017​	57.8​	12 December 1959​
New Zealand	79.9​	101.0​	18 June 2021​	51.8​	03 March 1956​
Pakistan	76.8​	92.0​	03 February 2012​	59.1​	16 October 1952​
Sri Lanka	72.6​	91.8​	16 November 2009​	50.8​	23 November 1990​
Zimbabwe	27.2​	58.1​	15 November 2001​	23.8​	21 October 2017​
Bangladesh	42.4​	58.0​	27 August 2017​	24.7​	17 October 2008​
Ireland	44.3​	48.0​	11 May 2018​	44.3​	24 July 2019​
Afghanistan	50.1​	55.3​	05 September 2019​	48.1​	02 March 2021​

Numbers are roughly intended to look like ICC ratings but obviously have no relation to them. England and Australia start at 100 Elo, any new team starts at the minimum of current teams - 5 unless that number is below 50 (start at 50 in that case).

Is there an average that you can calculate for the rating as well?