First of all the reason the thread is here is not meant to mislead you english fans... its because the equation involves test cricket as well... England may be # 2 but as far as i know.. they beat us at home and we beat them in Pakistan so where is the difference? Against every other team in test Cricket Pakistan has a better record of wins.. at home and away

Odis are a given to Pakistan.. we are second only to Australia in that form of the game.. which people will soon see when we are touring S.A at full strength with Muhammad Asif and Shoaib... look at it on paper.. thats a damn strong unit.

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I do not believe there is a clear No. 2 in Tests. Pakistan, Egland, India, Sri Lanka and South Africa all seem like capable of defeating each other at any time. So all of them to me are joint #2.

For ODIs, Pakistan is definitely #2 followed by the others.

I don't recall you winning your last test series in West Indies or South Africa unlike England but never let the facts get in the way of a good argument.

Very correct, Pakistan are/have an excellent one-day side; barring the CT (this years and the previous event) and our drawn One-Day series in England (and perhaps one other meaningless triangular tournament some where in Europe), we have comprehensively won pretty much every thing we have played in the past two years or so. On this basis alone, we should be considered amongst the top 3 sides in that format.

In test cricket, the story is different, we have done reasonably well at home (beating England 2-0, India 1-0, WI 2-0, and drawing with Sri Lanka 1-1), but have still underachieved significantly away from home, winning 1-0 away in Sri Lanka, drawing 1-1 in India, losing 0-3 against England, and just drawing 1-1 in the West Indies, when in recent times almost every other country, from New Zealand to South Africa to England and India have gone there and won and in the process broken 30 odd years of home wins for the WI, we are yet to achieve that, fair enough that unlike half of rest of the test world we only got a ridiculously small two test series there, one of which in we were unfortunately deprived of our two best batsman, and only god knows what might have happened if that series had even just one more test, but that's pure speculation, as things are right now, Greg is spot on, facts are facts, Pakistan's recent away is at best okay. We have a good chance coming up though, against SA, to put things right. One might even argue Pakistan's home record whilst being good is not good enough as it ought to be, because we did after all, just draw the series against Sri Lanka, given we're on paper arguably a stronger side than Sri Lanka and that we were at home, we should have won that. Over all, I'd say that we're a good side, with some good results, but not good enough to be considered in the top 3 of test cricket just yet, we need more away wins before we can claim this distinction, right now we're more like top 5.

As for a combined test and one-day ranking, both are entirely different formats, so quite useless in my opinion to come up with a combined ranking.

Agreed, the most sensible suggestion so far.

I would still say in Test cricket England are still confortably #2. I also agree with most other posters who say Pakistan are the #2 team for ODI's ( I would put the drawn series in England down to extenuating circumstances).

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Mark.

Well i guess England and Pak are both good at home then


and i do not think that such a ranking is useless.. so what if they are different form they are both still known as cricket and we are trying to judge which is the best all aoround cricketing side in both ODIS and tests.

South Africa is easily second in the world for ODI's, they are a very good all round ODI side.

They beat Australia in a ODI series, who have Pakistan beaten that are any good?

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Bill Ponsford - The only one who could play in Bradman’s company and make it a duet.

England?

I think - a year ago - South Africa were the second best side by the margin that Australia are the best. However, recently, the side have not had the greatest of performances due to a mixture of batting woes and slow bowler issues (although the slow bowler problems have been ongoing for quite a while).

What i've seen of SA recently hasnt impressed me much.

If Pakistan were more consistant then they would genuinely be #2, their problem is they can be fantastic one day and terrible the next. To be honest, in ODI's its hard to say who is the stand out #2, the problem is the Aussies are so far ahead of everyone else and there isnt much between the next 4 or 5 teams, i mean Pakistan, South Africa, India, Sri Lanka and even the Windies arent too far apart at the moment.

At least England are comfortably #2 in test cricket , even being on the end of a probable 5-0 .

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Mark.