The ICC World Test Championship 2019-2021 is the inaugural edition of the league based test cricket tournament run by the International Cricket Council (ICC), which started on 1st August 2019 with the 1st Test of the Ashes (England vs Australia) at Edgbaston, Birmingham and will end on 14th June 2021 at the iconic Lord’s Cricket Ground which will host the Finals of the tournament. The main idea behind this tournament is “Reviving Test Cricket” which is found to be dying in the era of the shortest version of the game.
Unlike T20 and ODI cricket, Test cricket lacked an ICC tournament, which could give the players a motivation to achieve something big in the longest format of the game. Players started to give preferences to domestic T20 leagues over international cricket which raised serious concerns over the sustainability of test cricket. But with the introduction of the ICC World Test Championship, each team is geared up to be crowned champion in the ultimate test.
The most unique thing about this tournament is that it awards consistency as it runs for a span of 2 years and there is no easy way out in this tournament. Also another advantage it provides is that it does not favor any single team (home advantage) as all the participating teams will be scheduled to play home as well as away series. There are 9 participating teams in this tournament: Australia,Bangladesh, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka and West Indies. Each time is scheduled to play six out of the eight opponents and will not play the remaining two opponents. For example India will not play Pakistan and Sri Lanka; South Africa will not play Bangladesh and New Zealand and so on, thus giving fair opportunities to every team.
Point system: Each series played under the test championship will carry 120 points irrespective of the number of matches in the series, and the number of points per match are divided accordingly. A win means all the allotted points goes to the winning team’s account whereas no points will be rewarded for a loss, whereas in case of a draw both teams will be rewarded one-third of the allotted points. At the end of the 2 year cycle, the top two teams will play each other in the Finals of the tournament.
The only drawback this tournament might face is that it could get too predictive at some point of time. For instance, India who has already reached 300 points is way ahead from the other competitors (2nd place team being at 60 points!) and are almost sure of making it to the finals. Apart from India, the only teams which are in good form in the longest format are the Aussies and Kiwis and in just the first 5 months of the tournament it could be predicted that the finals could be either “India vs Australia” or “India vs New Zealand”.
It will be interesting to see how things go further and hope that this tournament helps in uplifting the quality of test cricket across the globe.
Jai Kishan's blog 