Friday, November 2, 2001 The International Cricket Council has been talking the talk since Malcolm Gray took over as president. Sensible proposals, a rarity during previous regimes, have been gushing out of ICC's little headquarters at Lord's. One of the most pressing challenges is to bring some meaning to the great mass of one-day internationals organised by marketeers and television executives. ICC's decision to impose a league format and pull together disparate tournaments is worth pursuing, although it is not entirely clear where it might lead.

This initiative had barely made it on to news-stands when the editor of Wisden.com, Tim de Lisle, came up with a method of how ICC might do it. One test of a system is whether the results fit with what you would expect intuitively, and Wisden's one-day table comes pretty close.

A clear example is the tussle between Pakistan and Sri Lanka for third spot. Since the last World Cup both have been too good for most, but miserable against top-ranked Australia and South Africa. There is a gulf above and below, reflected clearly in the Wisden table. And herein lies the benefit of a ranking system.

Pakistan certainly consider themselves the best team around bar Australia. It baffles them why South Africa, even if they are a whole greater than the sum of their parts, beat them so regularly. Or how Sri Lanka could be mentioned in the same breath. But the table shows that Pakistan have plenty of work to do to put clear blue water between themselves and Sri Lanka and close in on South Africa. Sri Lanka, more humble but equally determined, can see that they are not the best team in either form of the game, a target they had set themselves for the turn of the millennium. But they are way ahead of, say, West Indies or England.

The table comes as another blow for Asia's claim to becoming the nerve centre of modern cricket. The region's teams are involved in the most one-day internationals yet none of them is jostling for top spot in the world pecking order. League tables might not tell the whole story but they do tell part of it. And the one told by the Test and one-day tables is that, however highly ranked the Asian teams are in the self-importance ratings, when it comes to performance they are mere second-rankers.

Battling for bronze is worthy but disappointing; the way India shuffle up and down the lower-middle order even more so. The time has come for Asia to wake up and turn the rhetoric into reality. Sunday's final is a minor skirmish in this long campaign - a mouth-watering canapé, no more. Talking up talent is an Asian obsession. If you can't walk the talk, don't talk it.

Kamran Abbasi, born in Lahore, brought up in Rotherham, is assistant editor of the BMJ. His Asian View appears every Friday on Wisden.com.

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