If he ever needed motivation to beat the West Indies, and events yesterday will have provided him with plenty, New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming has another.

It relates to the ICC Test Championship that losing captains say they don't take any notice of while long-suffering captains who achieve some consistency of performance are only too happy to acknowledge, in much the same way as politicians rate opinion polls.

If you hadn't already noticed, by virtue of Sri Lanka's series loss in England, they have lost their third place on the championship ladder and New Zealand have stepped into the breach, this despite their record loss to Pakistan in their last Test match outing.

Such is the nature of the table, however, that if New Zealand can be sufficiently fired up to perform well against the West Indies they will strengthen position on the Test table.

The table at the moment reads:

Australia 1.54 1, South Africa 1.50 2, New Zealand 1.13 3, Sri Lanka 1.07 4, England 1.06 5, West Indies 0.93 6, Pakistan 0.81 7, India 0.79 8, Zimbabwe 0.50 9, Bangladesh 0 10.

It is one of the inequities of the system developed for the championship that New Zealand can suffer a hiding as they did against Pakistan but it counts for nothing because the two match series was abandoned before that game could be played.

However, the prize for New Zealand from success would be significant.

If they could win the series in the West Indies, and their toughest rival may well be the weather, they would move to an average of 1.18.

If they draw the series, they will drop ever so slightly to 1.12. However, if they lose they would slip back below Sri Lanka and join England in fourth on the table.

The West Indies' average too can increase or decrease but not by enough to affect their current ranking. They won the last series in the West Indies 1-0, but this falls outside of the initial five-year cut off period set by the ICC for the championship.

© CricInfo