The International Cricket Council (ICC) has made a major reform in the points system ahead of the 2021-2023 World Test Championship (WTC) cycle. The second edition of the WTC will see the points being designated based on the number of matches and not to every series, the ICC confirmed in its latest media release.
In the previous edition of the World Test Championship cycle, every series was allocated 120 points. To simplify things, in a two-match Test series, each game was worth 60 points. However, after a lot of criticism on the points system, the ICC has come up with a new system of allocating points.
In the second edition of the World Test Championship, the points will be allocated on each Test match rather than the series. Each team will get 12 points on winning a Test, 4 points will be allocated to both sides if the Test match results in a draw while 6 points will be allocated in case of a tie. And, Teams will be ranked on the percentage of points won.
WTC23 Points System
Points Available Per Series
WTC23 Fixtures:
The second cycle of the World Test Championship, which is scheduled between August 2021 and March 2023, sees nine teams competing for the Test mace. All the teams will play 6 Test series during the cycle, three home and three away. The cut-off date is decided to be March 31, 2023.
"We received feedback that the previous points system needed to be simplified," ICC Acting Chief Executive Geoff Allardice said. "The Cricket Committee took this into consideration when proposing a new, standardised points system for each match. It maintained the principle of ensuring that all matches in a WTC series count towards a team's standing, while accommodating series varying in length between two Tests and five Tests,” he added.
Allardice further said, "During the pandemic we had to change to ranking teams on the points table using the percentage of available points won by each team, since all series could not be completed. This helped us determine the finalists and we were able to complete the championship within the scheduled time frame. This method also allowed us to compare the relative performance of teams at any time, regardless of how many matches they had played."
WTC 2021-23 Fixture Spread
Surprisingly, in its release, the ICC hasn't stated anything regarding the final of the championship. No information regarding the date and venue of the summit clash has been revealed yet.
Recently, there has been a lot of debate that took place regarding tweaking the format of the final. Indian skipper Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri would have wanted it to be a three-match final instead of only one. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if ICC makes a change in the format of the final or stick to the same template.
The skippers of the two finalists of the inaugural edition of WTC, Virat Kohli and Kane Williamson, expressed their delight over the start of the second edition of the league. The duo is looking forward to the next cycle as India and England are due to start the proceedings with a five-match Test series, starting August 4, 2021.
"It was obviously pretty special to win the inaugural ICC World Test Championship in Southampton last month and it’s exciting to now look ahead to the second edition," said Williamson.
“The WTC has certainly added more context and brought new meaning to Test cricket and it was awesome to see the interest that was generated around the Final against India,” he added.
Speaking in the same light, Virat Kohli said, "Our focus will be on making sure we prepare as well as we can for the tours ahead and trying to maintain our level of performance.”
“It was great to have played the final of the ICC World Test Championship against New Zealand in what was a memorable contest," he added.
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