The new, World Test Championship, format has accorded competitiveness to all cricket games, even against lesser names
The World Test Championship was launched to bring excitement back into the longest format of the game, vis-Ã -vis the faster T20 matches, across the globe. The inaugural season, which started immediately after the end of ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 and concluded with the first ever WTC Final in Southampton between India and New Zealand on Wednesday, was the first ever multination ICC event which was played with the red ball. The idea to start the championship in the ultimate format was to give relevance to every bilateral series that is played as the points were awarded to each team after the end of every series and the top two teams with the maximum number of points by the end of a two-year cycle make it to the final and fight for the silverware. Ever since the WTC format came into act, the Test matches saw the rise in level of competitiveness. The teams now go for the kill in every game because a win would get them extra points as against a draw. Earlier, teams used to rest all format players for the red ball matches against the not-so-fancy opponents but now, under the new format, even after winning the series before all the matches are played, team’s don’t rest their main players and would rather start with the strongest possible eleven in all the matches.
The competitiveness that was missing from the Test matches was installed back into the game by this WTC championship and it has certainly added an extra flair in the bilateral matches. Now the matches against teams like Bangladesh and Windies also have the same relevance as that of the matches against Australia or England. However, there are still a few things that needed to be sorted out to make it even more interesting and worthy, like the number of points awarded after every Test match win should be the same, irrespective of the number of matches in the series. Every game should be offering equal points and not like a five-match Test series will offer 24 points per Test win as compared to 60 per win in case of two match series. That is quite unfair. There were discussions about if one game is enough to determine the winner, like in case of this year’s championship, or the ICC should consider having a proper Best of Three final to get the winner.