ICC going to stick with percentage point system for next WTC cycle, confirms CEO Geoff Allardice

The first edition of the World Test Championship (WTC) is heading towards its conclusion as India and New Zealand are all set to face each other in the final. The showpiece event will be played from June 18 to June 22 at the Southampton. Meanwhile, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has already started preparations for the second edition of the Test Championship.

Advertisment

It is learned that the apex cricketing body has decided to tweak the points system. In the first edition, the teams were originally ranked on the basis of the points secured by them. However, the allocation of points caused a lot of chaos and controversy. Initially, ICC allotted 120 points to every series, and the number of points attained for winning one match was decided on the basis of the number of matches played in one Test series.

However, since the Covid-19 halted the cricketing activities and many teams couldn’t play the decided Test games, ICC decided to determine the top two teams by using a percentage system. The percentage was calculated on the basis of the total number of matches played by a team and the number of matches in which a team secures the victory.

ICC has decided to stick with the percentage system to decide the top two for the second edition of the World Test Championship as well.

“We are going to stick with the percentage-of-points-won method to rank teams. 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,” Geoff Allardice, the ICC’s acting chief executive officer said as reported by bdcrictime.