ICC confirms details of next World Test Championship

India will play Sri Lanka, New Zealand, and Australia at home. And tour England, Bangladesh, and South Africa in the ICC World Test Championship cycle 2021-23. The International Cricket Council on Wednesday confirmed the fixtures for the second edition of the tournament, apart from announcing the new points system.

Each match of the upcoming WTC will now be contested for the same number of points – 12 for a win, four for a draw, and six for a tie. Moving away from the previous system. There the same number of points were allocated to each series, divided across the number of matches played.

Feedback

ICC Acting Chief Executive Geoff Allardice said the changes had been made to simplify the points system while taking learnings from the disruption last year:

“We received feedback that the previous points system needed to be simplified. The Cricket Committee took this into consideration when proposing a new, standardized 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.

“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 2 Fixtures: As in the first edition of the championship, the nine teams will play six series each, three home and three away with the cut-off date being 31 March 2023.

The ICC World Test Championship will commence with the England-India series in Nottingham on 4 August

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