The World Test Championship is the pinnacle event in the international cricket calendar, with the best teams vying to win the prestigious ICC Test Championship Mace. It is structured like a league and final tournament, with the top nine Test nations competing across a two-year cycle.
The system was introduced in 2019 and is designed to add significance to bilateral Test series, as well as ensuring that the game remains compelling for fans and players. Each match within a series counts towards the WTC, and the winning team receives 12 points for a victory, four for a draw, and six for a tie. The points are then added together and divided by the number of matches played to give each team a rating, which is updated after each series.
South Africa ripped the label off Australia’s callused grip in a riveting World Test Championship final at Lord’s, beating them by five wickets and ending a 28-year trophy drought. The Proteas have been on an upward curve for the past 18 months, but they were not expected to make it to this stage of a new cycle – the 2023-25 edition of the competition – having started the campaign by sending out a C-team to New Zealand while the best South African players opted to compete in the IPL and county cricket.
But that hardly diminishes the scale of their achievement. South Africa have been the inadvertent beneficiaries of a less-is-more approach to scheduling, in which they play fewer five-Test series against other top-tier sides. As a result, their precious points-per-Test ratio has been protected from the effects of fixture fatigue.