The World Test Championship, in brief, is the World Cup for Test Match Cricket.
Although the World Cup in One Day Cricket is a tournament which happens in four years, the World Test Championship will be played in cycles of two years each.
The first edition of the World Test Championship will commence in 11 days and will end on June 2021.
The need for World Test Championship
The need for introducing World Test Championship arose since bilateral test series were becoming less and less interesting for the fans of the sport.
Hence, the International Cricket Council (ICC) realised that having a title to play for at the end of it all will make Bilateral Test Series more meaningful and will give a lot more impetus to the competing teams.
With the introduction of World Test Championship, each format of the game will now have a pinnacle tournament and hence a World Champion.
Although the format was approved in 2010, the inaugural tournament never materialised.
How will it function?
As per the ICC Test Rankings, the top nine teams will play six series each – three home and three away – the teams will be decided mutually and each side will play six of the other sides.
Each series will have two to five Test matches and this implies that not all sides will play the same Tests.
Each series is of 12 points irrespective of the number of Tests. Thus the maximum a Team can score is 120*6= 720 points over a two-year cycle.
Also, the 120 points will be divided equally for each Test in a series so there will no ‘dead rubbers’.
The two teams with most points will play the final in June, 2021 which will be played in England.
But every series is worth 120 points, irrespective of the number of Tests in it. A team can score a maximum of 720 points (six series, 120 points each) over a two-year cycle. The two sides with the most points at the end of the league will contest the final in England in June 2021.