ICC World Test Championship: Points Distribution a Major Flaw?

The ICC World Test Championship, after a lot of planning and a few unsuccessful attempts, is ready to grace the cricket romantics. The first cycle of the Test Championship will take place between 2019 and 2021. The Ashes will get the proceedings underway for the World Test Championship.

Who will play?

The first nine ranked Test playing nations participate in the tournament. Teams will be awarded points for each Test match during the two year cycle contributing to the overall points table. After the end of the two year cycle, top two teams will play the finale to determine the World Champion. If the final ends as draw or a tie, the team that finished at the top in the league will be declared as the winner of the Test Championship.

As each game will carry points, dead rubbers will no linger be dead and it might put an end to the long heard cliche ‘playing for pride’.

Points Distribution-

The points distribution is not going to be as straight forward. The main reason being every team will not play equal number of matches. Each team will play only six teams from the pool of nine, three home and three away. Each series may contain a minimum of two matches to five matches in the series. So a regular points system will give a disadvantage to the teams playing lesser number of games.

Here is the points distribution system implemented for the tournament-

As all the teams will not be playing the same opponents and same number of matches, the points system and the format might come into question.

Why not a regular format?

While Historical rivalries like The Ashes being reduced to a two or three match series will not be accepted, there is not enough time to organize each series as a five match series. So, ICC had to come up with a system that would a system that would nullify the disadvantage to the teams playing lesser number of games.