<\/p>\n
Dublin, May 16 (TNS): Kevin O\u2019Brien has not only broken into the ICC world Test rankings, but has surged up the ladder to as high as 66th in the batting standings after his history-making century against Pakistan in Ireland\u2019s inaugural five-day game, Irish media reported on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The 34-year-old became the first Ireland player to score a Test ton on Monday and his player-of-the-match performance at Malahide has seen him make an impressive entry into the batting rankings, earning 440 points.<\/p>\n
It means O\u2019Brien has made the second-best start in the Test rankings after Australian Charles Bannerman, who earned 447 ranking points for his innings of 165 against England at the MCG in 1877.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, both Tim Murtagh and Stuart Thompson have entered the bowling rankings on the back of good performances with the ball.<\/p>\n
Murtagh took six wickets in the match and is the best placed of the Ireland bowlers, slotting in at number 67, while Thompson\u2019s impressive Test debut \u2014 he scored 53 in Ireland\u2019s second innings as well as taking four wickets \u2014 sees him go in as high as 88th and joint number 76 in the all-rounder rankings.<\/p>\n
Although their Test debut ended in a five-wicket defeat to Pakistan, Ireland\u2019s first foray into the long-form format left grounds for optimism as they produced\u00a0a spirited\u00a0fightback.<\/p>\n
Courtesy: The 42<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dublin, May 16 (TNS): Kevin O\u2019Brien has not only broken into the ICC world Test rankings, but has surged up the ladder to as high as 66th in the batting standings after his history-making century against Pakistan in Ireland\u2019s inaugural five-day game, Irish media reported on Wednesday. The 34-year-old became the first Ireland player […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65684,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65682\/revisions\/65684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/65683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}