Dubai: The International Cricket Council (ICC) will look to ‘‘tweak’’ the points system in the upcoming Board meeting to complete the World Test Championship (WTC) cycle and host the final in June next year as per schedule between the top two finishers. The Board of Directors’ meeting will be held virtually on Wednesday-Thursday.
The fate of the WTC, along with the now postponed T20 World Cup, were the two issues which dogged the world governing body of the game throughout 2020 when international cricket fixtures had come to a grinding halt for five months since March due to COVID-19. While the World T20 was eventually postponed and it opened up a window for the IPL, the WTC resumed with the England-West Indies Test match behind closed doors in July.
However, the backlog of Test fixtures mean members of the nine cricket boards will have to agree to the suggestions put forth by the ICC Cricket Committee to help the Championship finish by June.
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‘‘There is a possibility that points will be split for all those bi-lateral series that had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Not all members will like it but re-scheduling the fixtures is now out of question, as it will affect the next cycle from 2021 to ‘23,’’ informed sources told Gulf News.
While one of the options is splitting points for the series not played, the other feasible option could be considering the points for only those matches that could be actually be played by the end of March 2021. Based on those matches till March, the final positions on the points table could be computed based on the percentage of points the teams have won from the matches that they’ve contested.
The ‘Big Three’ of India, Australia and England are occupying the top three positions with 360 points, 296 and 292, respectively.
Meanwhile, the ICC is scheduled to announce the successor to Shashank Manohar, chairman of International Cricket Council (ICC) who stepped down earlier this year, in December. Greg Barclay, Chairman of New Zealand Cricket has emerged as a ‘compromise candidate’ for the top job in the sport but Imran Khwaja, the former Singapore Cricket Association president and currently interim chairman of ICC for last three months – is also expected to throw his hat in the ring.
POINTS SYSTEM OF WTC
* Each series carries 120 points and depending on the number of matches: two, three, four or five, the points are distributed.
* For a two-Test series, winner gets 60 per match and 30 for a draw.
* For a three-match series, it is 40 and 20 for win and draw, respectively.
* For a four-match series, it is 30 and 15 while for a five-game series, it would be 24 and 12 points for a win and draw, respectively.