ICC to stick with percentage point system for WTC 2021-23, tweaks rules a bit

The International Cricket Council (ICC) officials, as well as the fans, experts, and critics, are all gearing for the inaugural World Test Championship (WTC) Final between India and New Zealand which is scheduled to take place on June 18 in Southampton.

The ICC had introduced this new format and based on a two-year cycle,  all the Test-playing nations get a chance to play each other. At the end of the period, the table-toppers are selected based on the percentage of the points system that earns them the right to face each other in the marquee clash. New Zealand was the first one to enter the finals followed by India.

Now the ICC has brought in some new changes to the points system for the next two-year cycle. In the current one, all the series were awarded 120 points which included a two-match Test series. The points also varied, depending on the number of Tests played in the series. This rule was going along smoothly before COVID-19 disturbed all the plans for the rest of the series.

After a lot of deliberation, ICC then introduced the percentage of a points system to compensate for the losses in matches due to the pandemic. This particular situation created chaos, which resulted in teams playing fewer games and won fewer matches thereby managing to get an advantage and edge past the other teams.

ICC to allot equal points from the next cycle of Test Championship

With few teams getting undue advantage and leaving the other teams in a tangle, ICC has now tweaked a points system a bit by awarding equal points to all the Test matches and there won’t be the same mistake of allotting equal points to series like last time. At the end of the cycle, the percentage of points will be calculated based on the total number of matches played and the resulting points.

“We are going to stick with the percentage-of-points-won method to rank teams,” Geoff Allardice, the ICC’s acting chief executive officer said as reported by bdcrictime. “When we looked at the first 12 months of the competition you had teams on a number of points, but it was all relative to how many series they had played.

“So one of the ways to compare teams on an ongoing basis is what proportion of the points that have been available in the matches they played have won. And that percentage served us well in the second half of the Championship,” he added.