ICC World Test Championship 2019 to 2021 - 2 years, 27 Bilateral series and One Winner
After the ICC World Cup 2019 festival entire cricket world both players and fans got some rest for the past two weeks. Its the time to celebrate another biggest tournament of ICC, World Test Championship 2019 - 2021. Till last month entire world thought WTC means World Trade Center, from now onwards ICC added new abbreviation for WTC. For the past ten years short format games both ODI and T20 ruling the entire cricket world. Because of T20 games sometimes we might felt boring with ODI too. Then how come we expect people to enjoy test matches. Still test matches having seperate fan base including me. We should not test matches is the original face of cricket. ICC decided to conduct a tournament for only test playing nations and so they created WTC. They didnt change any series planned by domestic cricket boards. They just organised every series and made as a tournament. Its time to fight for the proud World Test Championship Trophy.
Participating Nations:
Top Nine teams among the test playing countries gonna play in this tournament. Its the same set of teams who played in 2019 WC last month, except the minnows Afghanistan. Zimbabwe ranked at tenth in ICC test ranking were not eligible to play in this tournament. More over they are suspended temporarily from International Cricket by ICC just before two weeks.
Team India gonna play for this trophy as defending champions with rank 1 in tests. New Zealand, South Africa, England, Australia, Sri lanka, Pakistan, West Indies and Bangladesh were the other teams from rank 2 to 9 respectively.
Tournament Format:
Nine teams gonna play 27 bilateral series for the next two years. The tournament contains both home series and away series for each team. Totally 71 matches gonna play in this tournament. England gonna play the maximum number of matches (22 matches) in this tournament followed by Australia (19) and India (18). South Africa (16), Windies (15), New Zealand and Bangladesh will play 14 matches each. Sri lanka and Pakistan were the two teams will play minimum matches (13 each) in this tournament.
At the end of 71 games from 27 series the top two teams at points table will play in the finals at Lords. The problem is each team not going to play against all the 8 remaining teams. But they should play at least against 6 teams including both home and away series. This gonna create lot of controversy at the end along with the points system.
Points System:
The points system created by ICC will be the problem for many teams. Since every team not going to play equal number of matches, ICC try to split points based on number of matches playing. As per the that teams who gonna play 5 match series will get 24 points for win and 8 for draw and 12 for tie. Teams who gonna play a two match series will get 60 points for win, 20 for draw and 30 for tie. For 3 match series and 4 match series the points split up will be as like above table. Loser wont get any points.
The real problem is here only, if a team play two series match against a small team they can get easily 120 points. On the other side If two biggies play a 5 match series may result in many draw, for that those teams will receive only 8 points each.
Now only ICC received many comments from cricket fans and players for their boundary deciding winning rule in WC 2019 finals. Its sure they are gonna face another blow from fans because of this points system. Instead of that ICC should plan equal number of matches for all the teams in future World Test Championship tournament from 2021 onward.
Schedule:
And the happiest thing is this big tournament gonna start with two big games in an epic series. Its "The Ashes" between the cricket rivals England Vs Australia from August 1st 2019 onward.
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