THE International Cricket Council(ICC) on Wednesday confirmed the points system for the second edition of the ICC World Test Championship(WTC) as well as the bilateral series that will be part of the 2021-23 cycle commencing next month.
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 where the same number of points were allocated to each series,divided across the number of matches played.
ICC acting Cheif Executive Geoff Allardice said the changes had been made to simplify while taking learnings from the disruption last year."We recieved feedback that the previous points system needed to be simplified. The Cricket Committee took this into consideration while 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 accomodating 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.”he added in the release by ICC.
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.
Meanwhile, New Zealand captain Kane Williamson, India captain Virat Kohli and England captain Joe Root looked forward to doing their best in the second edition of the ICC World Test Championship, which commences with the England-India series in Nottingham on 4 August.
New Zealand captain Kane Williamson said: “It was obviously pretty special to win the inaugural ICC World Test Championship in Southampton last month and it’s exciting to now look ahead to the second edition.
“The WTC has certainly added more context and brought new meaning to Test cricket and it was awesome to see the interest that was generated around the Final against India.”
“We know trying to defend the title will be a huge challenge, but our focus will be on making sure we prepare as well as we can for the tours ahead and trying to maintain our level of performance.”
SOURCE:
https://www.icc-cricket.com/media-releases/2188985
