@Rapido said in New Zealand rise to No. 2 in Test rankings for the first time:
In retrospective rankings, NZ have been second before.
Official rankings date only from 2002.
Saw this on reddit:
View image
Fascinating graph really. Thanks for posting it.
Gives some credence to that 2001-2004 team being in the same conversation; achieving a similar peak points total as the current side - just with a wider spread of teams. It looks as though the cursed 2004 England series (which you can clearly see on the graph where the teams start even then diverge) where NZ were winning every game going into Sunday and somehow lost the series 3-0 could have ultimately put them in second along with the current side and the late 80s side.
edit: The graph is a bit tricky in the sense it's a trailing measure so the peak for each team/era is likely already a year or two from the absolute peak of the team. A lot of the peak is going to be in "climbing" the rankings. Would be interesting to see it as a moving average +/- ~2 years.