Who was the last cricketer to achieve the top of ICC men's rankings in all 3 formats?

Jasprit Bumrah on Wednesday, February 7, climbed to the top of the ICC men's Test rankings for bowlers. He became the first bowler to have achieved the summit in all three formats since ICC began showing rankings for T20Is in 2005.

Bumrah became the number one ranked bowler in ODIs in February 2018 and held on to the spot for two years. In T20Is, he was at the top for a brief period in 2017. By gaining the top spot in Tests now, he became only the fifth player after Ricky Ponting, Shakib Al Hasan, Matthew Hayden, and Virat Kohli to reach the top of the ICC rankings in all three formats at least once in their careers.

The last cricketer to achieve the milestone was Virat Kohli in 2018, who was also the first Indian to do so. Kohli achieved the top ranking in ODIs in 2013 and dominated the position for multiple years till 2019.

Kohli went to the pinnacle of T20Is in 2014 as well and remained among the best till around 2017, although constantly getting promoted to and relegated from the top. He became the Test number one for the first time in 2018, thus cracking the trio.

Ponting completed his set of three in 2005 by getting to the top of T20I rankings. Shakib has dominated all formats as the all-rounder at a level that might never be achieved again. He ticked all three in 2015, also bagging T20Is in the end.

Former Australian opener Matthew Hayden had also topped the rankings in all three formats during his career.

Which cricketers have achieved top-three ICC rankings at the same time?

While reaching the top in all three formats is difficult, doing it simultaneously has been extremely rare. For context, Bumrah is number one in Tests but sixth in ODIs and as far back as 100th in T20Is.

Only Ponting and Shakib achieved the top at the same time in all formats for brief periods in 2005 and 2015, respectively.

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