Following the majestic win against South Africa in the second Test of the three-match series which gave India an unassailable lead of 2-0, Virat Kohli and his men have become the first team to cross the 200-point mark in the table of ICC World Test Championship.
While India climbed up to the prime spot right after their first Test series of the Championship against the West Indies, beating the Proteas in the first two Tests have extended their lead at the top by 140 points. After amassing a total of 120 points from the two-match series against the Windies, India have so far collected 80 points from the first two Tests against Faf du Plessis & Co.
At a distant second, New Zealand and Sri Lanka sit with only 60 points having won one Test each of the two-match series they played against each other in August. Australia and England share the following positions with 56 points after playing out a drawn Ashes last month. Both the teams won two matches each and saw one end without a result.
Having lost all their matches in the ICC World Test Championship so far, South Africa and West Indies are yet to open their account. The other two teams, Bangladesh and Pakistan have not played any Test matches since the inception of the Championship.
This is how the points table look:
1. India (200 points)
2. New Zealand (60 points)
3. Sri Lanka (60 points)
4. Australia (60 points)
5. England (56 points)
6. South Africa (No point)
7. West Indies (No point)
8. Bangladesh (Yet to play a match)
9. Pakistan (Yet to play a match).
The World Test Championship is the latest brainchild of ICC and it has been started to increase the competitiveness among the Test-playing teams and attract the interest of the fans back to the traditional form of the game.
The Test Championship will run from August 2019 to June 2021 and will see the top-ranked nine Test teams play against six of the other eight teams in series of two, three, four and five matches.
The points to be taken from every series will be 120, irrespective of the number of matches. Thus one match of a two-Test series will have 60 points which is half of 120 points. Also, if the series is three, four and five matches long, the number of points to be won in a single match will be a third, a quarter, or a fifth of the total points available in the series.