Dubai (SunstarTV Bureau): The International Cricket Council (ICC) will stick to percentage-of-points-won method for ranking teams in the 2021-2023 World Test Championship (WTC) cycle, said Geoff Allardice, the apex body’s chief executive officer (CEO).
“We are going to stick with the percentage-of-points-won method to rank teams,” Allardice said.
“When we looked at the first 12 months of the competition you had teams on a number of points, but it was all relative to how many series they had played. So one of the ways to compare teams on an ongoing basis is what proportion of the points that have been available in the matches they played have been actually won. And that percentage served us well in the second half of the Championship,” he added.
Allardice added that the issue of discrepancy between series due to difference in number of Tests has also been sorted with the percentage-of-points-won method.
“The other thing is if we are using the percentage of points won we can put a standardised number of points per Test match. So it doesn’t matter if it is a two-Test series or a five-Test series, the same number of points will be available for each match that’s played, but every team would be judged on the percentage of those points it wins, not on total,” he said further.
“The aim of creating the competition four years ago was to try and bring about more interest in Test cricket globally.
“It was obvious that the interest in certain series wasn’t just restricted to the two teams involved. It was coming from all over the cricketing world and to bring that sort of context to Test cricket has been a real step forward,” said Allardice.
(Sources: IANS)
