Australia vs England: Who Rules Tests Now? 🇦🇺
Who is stronger in men's Tests: Australia or England? Team strength (Elo rating) year by year, up to 2026.
What is an Elo rating? A strength score for teams, calculated from every match ever played: win and you gain points, lose and you drop - more for beating a strong team. Higher = stronger; 1500 is an average team.
Australia: 1,477 (1884) → best 1,826 (2007) → 1,721 (2026) · World Test Championship titles: 2023
England: 1,523 (1884) → best 1,721 (2011) → 1,609 (2026)
What the number means: 1800+ = world top, 1600 = a strong team, 1500 = average, below 1300 = a weak team.
The rating only counts results, so a team that beats strong teams climbs fast; years without matches keep the old rating.
Elo rating = a strength score for a team, calculated by us from every international match it played in that format. After each match the winner takes points from the loser - more when the winner was the weaker team; a draw or tie moves a few points to the weaker side. Every team starts at 1500. Lines are smoothed over 3 years; the numbers are the real end-of-year ratings.
Terms used:
- Elo rating: a strength score from all results; more points = stronger team
- our calculation: no official rating goes back to 1877, so we calculated one with the Elo method
- Test: the longest format, up to 5 days, can end in a draw
- ODI: One Day International, 50 overs per team
- T20I: Twenty20 International, 20 overs per team
Data: match results from the ESPNcricinfo archive (via the outside-edge/toss-up dataset, 1884-2015, plus the first Tests 1877-1884) and Cricsheet (cricsheet.org, 2016 - October 2026). Afghanistan is missing from Cricsheet after 2015 and is not shown after 2015. Elo rating: our calculation.
🎵 Music: Driving Groove
Follow for more data videos!
#australia #england #cricketrankings #eloratings #testcricket #cricket #icc #dataviz #datavisualization #statistics
