Friday, September 21, 2001 America's pursuit of Osama bin Laden, dead or alive, has left Pakistan's autumn programme in tatters and put them even deeper in the economic doldrums. The Indian and Sri Lankan cricket boards must be apprehensive that a protracted conflict will leave them in the same boat.

Whether a rich cricket board produces a successful team is open to debate. The Indian board is rumoured to be the richest yet the team performs inconsistently. There is clearly more to it. But the wealth of a nation (rather than its board) must be factor in the development of sport in that country because of the investment in facilities, infrastructure, and personnel. The health level of its people surely plays a part in the fitness of its sports stars, and will also give some indication of the sophistication of the health care system in that country. While educational level could indicate the general awareness of the rigours of international sport, and point to the level of coaching and training support available.

So is sport's level playing field really level? When Bangladesh play Australia, it's 11 men against 11 other men, and the passion for cricket in each nation is about the same. But it is not just in terms of experience and skill that the Aussies have the edge. They also have a huge advantage in wealth, health and education.

Now look at this table:

1. Australia	0.94
2. England	0.92
3. New Zealand	0.91
4. West Indies	0.78
5. Sri Lanka	0.74
6. South Africa	0.70
7. India	0.57
8. Zimbabwe	0.55
9. Pakistan	0.50
10. Bangladesh	0.47

It isn't much different from the ICC Test Championship table, give or take South Africa's low ranking and New Zealand punching above its weight. In fact, you might argue that it has nothing to do with cricket but I'd argue that it does. This interesting table is a ranking of the Test playing nations in terms of the Human Development Index, which is a composite measure of each country's life expectancy, educational level, and gross domestic product. Factors that the United Nations considers are fundamental in terms of evaluating a country's development.

I've taken the liberty of using the UK rating for England and aggregated the West Indian states. South Africa is also unusual because the development index for whites alone would be far higher than for the blacks alone. But the similarity with ICC's Test championship is striking.

The ICC table:

1. Australia	1.62
2. South Africa	1.50
3. England	1.14
4. Sri Lanka	1.08
5. West Indies	1.00
6. New Zealand	0.93
7. Pakistan	0.73
8. India	0.69
9. Zimbabwe	0.40
10. Bangladesh	0.00

Although individual variation will usually avoid the two tables being a carbon copy, the next ten years will test whether or not this development related hypothesis of world cricket holds. I think it will. The more developed countries (in UN terms) will bunch in the top half of the table and the less developed will be in the lower half, with one or two exceptions.

In which case why not truly level the playing field and consider the development index of a country when calculating its Test ranking? If I were a clever statistician I would now be able to do something called "adjustment" which would factor in the differences in development index when calculating the Test table. But most of us are not clever statisticians so I'll do something simple and divide a country's ICC Test table average by its UN development index. You could call it a handicap. It is also a measure of how well each test playing nation is using its resources.

This is how the Test table looks (playing field levelled):

1. South Africa	2.14
2. Australia	1.72
3=. Pakistan	1.46
3=. Sri Lanka	1.46
5. West Indies	1.28
6. England	1.24
7. India	1.21
8. New Zealand	1.02
9. Zimbabwe	0.73
10. Bangladesh	0.00

Even better than the real thing? I think so, but I do have an Asian bias.

Kamran Abbasi, born in Lahore, brought up in Rotherham, is the assistant editor of the British Medical Journal.

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