An Improved Point System for Cricket’s World Test Championship

Abstract

With the advent of formats of limited overs in cricket like the One Day and Twenty-20 Internationals, test cricket, the longest-running version of the game, has witnessed a significant decline in popularity. The World Test Championship (WTC) was launched in 2019 by the International Cricket Council to reignite interest in test cricket. However, the initial point distribution system devised for the inaugural WTC had several shortcomings, which include allocating points based on the outcome of the entire series rather than the number of test matches played, the absence of rewards for teams winning matches away from home, failing to take into consideration the margin of victory (MOV) and not accounting for the relative strength of competing teams. Considering these shortcomings, this article proposes a new point system, thus providing an alternative to the existing one. The point system uses the Elo rating system, including factors such as home-field advantage, impact of the toss and MOV. Statistical analyses were conducted to validate the home-field advantage and toss impact. Subsequently, the proposed model developed was named the points won per match system. The team rankings in the WTC are established based on this proposed model and compared with the actual one.