Sachin Tendulkar retained his second spot among batsmen while India were closed in by Pakistan for the fourth place in the championship table of the latest ICC rankings list.
Tendulkar has 777 rating points and he is placed behind leader Graeme Smith of South Africa who has 792 points, while Australian skipper Ricky Ponting is at third with 770. India one-day skipper MS Dhoni is at 10th with 728 points.
Meanwhile, after their 5-0 whitewash against Bangladesh, Pakistan narrowed the gap with fourth-placed India to three ratings points. South Africa (127), Australia (127) and New Zealand (113) are ahead of India (113).
Significant
The most significant change of the rankings was Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan slipping out of the top 10 bowlers in the rankings for the first time in over a decade.
Muralitharan, who was last out of the top 10 ODI bowlers in July 1997, skipped the ODI series which the West Indies won 2-0 and has now slipped to 11th below Pakistan's all-rounder Shahid Afridi who climbed 11 places to enter the top 10 for the first time in his career after a successful series against Bangladesh in which he bagged 12 wickets.