There is no better way to enter a tournament than to make a winning start. Australia kicked off the inaugural edition of the ICC World Test Championship of Test Cricket by winning the first Test of the 2019 Ashes series beating England at Edgbaston a fortnight back. This win was followed by Sri Lanka winning their first match of the newly formed tournament when they beat second ranked New Zealand by six wickets at Galle on Sunday.
Sri Lanka’s win projected them to the top of the ICC World Test Championship table straightaway with 60 points as compared to Australia’s 24.
For those who are not so familiar with the way the tournament rules work this would come as a surprise why Australia received only 24 points for a win whereas Sri Lanka picked up a massive 60.
Each series carry a maximum of 120 points distributed as follows and the following table gives a clear picture of how the points are distributed for each series:
What the above table specifies is that you stand to gain more points for a win if you play a series with the less number of Test matches. The Sri Lanka-New Zealand series has only two Tests whereas the Ashes comprises five.
However the most significant factor in the points table is the penalty that is being imposed for slow over rate. A team that is behind the required over-rate at the end of a match will have two competition points deducted for each over it is behind.
For a start only the top nine ranked full members of the ICC are participants of this tournament namely Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka and West Indies.
Instead of everyone playing everyone else equally on a round robin basis, each team is scheduled to play only six of the eight possible opponents, thus Sri Lanka will not play Australia and India in the tournament, but will have fixtures against the remaining six.
Each team plays a different set of opponents, and so can considered as having an easier or harder schedule. For example, New Zealand do not play England and South Africa, two of the highest-ranked teams, whereas Australia do not play Sri Lanka and West Indies, two of the lowest ranked teams.
With regard to other teams Bangladesh don’t play England and South Africa, England don’t play Bangladesh and New Zealand, India don’t play Pakistan and Sri Lanka, Pakistan don’t play India and West Indies, South Africa don’t play Bangladesh and New Zealand, and West Indies don’t play Australia and Pakistan.
Also, while there is a balance with all teams playing three series at home and three series away, this is not the case with the individual matches. For example, India play ten Tests at home and eight away, whereas the West Indies play just six at home and nine away. Four of the ‘biggest’ and highest-ranked nations (India, England, Australia and South Africa) all play each other, in some of the longest series of the whole Championship, and the teams these four nations do not play are generally lower-ranked nations.
Sri Lanka’s matches in the World Test Championship over the two-year period are as follows:
2019 August: vs New Zealand (2 Tests at home)
2019 October: vs Pakistan (2 Tests away)
2020 March: vs England (2 Tests at home)
2020 July: vs Bangladesh (2 Tests at home)
2021 January: vs South Africa (2 Tests away)
2021 February: vs West Indies (2 Tests away)
2021 June 10-14: Final at Lord’s
Thus Sri Lanka has a total of 12 Tests to finish within the top two of the final league standings to qualify for a place in the final at Lord’s.
Apart from these fixtures Sri Lanka will also play Test matches against other nations which are not part of the World Test Championship under the Future Tours Program (FTP).
As it is the case with all new concepts there is bound to be some controversy arising from it. All the series have been mutually agreed between the two nations involved, but this had led to allegations that the schedule has been agreed based on what will provide the biggest television audiences, and therefore television receipts, rather than selecting an even spread of teams. This shows that success in this competition is not the only priority for these nations.
Further the ICC has announced that India and Pakistan two of the fiercest rivals will not play against each other in the first and second editions of the tournament.
Every tournament has its flaws and as all the teams in the inaugural tournament don’t play each other can the World Test Championship be considered a fair assessment of deciding on the best Test team in the world when the two top sides meet to decide on the world Test champion in the final at Lord’s in June 2021?
We don’t want to see another farcical end to the World Test Championship like the 2019 Cricket World Cup where the winner was decided on an unusual method – by the boundary count.