The 2023-25 World Test Championship is approaching its final stage, but what would things have looked like had away wins been rewarded more than home wins?
The race to the WTC 2023-25 final is, at the point, a tripartite contest between South Africa, Australia, and India, while Sri Lanka hang on by the thinnest of threads. South Africa’s run, in particular, has been incredible – for they were little qualms in sending a second-string side to New Zealand and as good as conceding the series.
The WTC rewards 12 points for a win, six for a tie, and four for a draw. Points are deducted for poor over rates. Once everything is done, the teams are ranked by PCT, the ratio between the points a team got and the maximum number of points they could have got. For the latter, the rules use 12 times the number of Tests.
This is where the teams stand at this point.
But what if the WTC rewarded teams more for away wins? Few sports are as dependent on the playing arena as cricket. The right to prepare the pitch makes the home side firm favourites. Other conditions – familiarity, fan support – add to that. Up against an already uphill task, touring side find their job even more difficult in Test cricket than in shorter versions: 450 overs are likelier to tell the better side than the 100 overs in ODIs or the 40 overs in T20 cricket.
It, thus, makes sense to check whether the teams would have fared differently if away wins were assigned more points (though it would have confused Ben Stokes even more). This could have been done in two ways.
The conservative method would be to reward bonus points for wins (two, say) and draws (one) away from home – 14 for a win, 7 for a tie, 5 for a draw. Let us call this Method 1.
A bolder alternative would be to consider an away outcome as two outcomes – in other words, 24 for a win, 12 for a tie, 8 for a draw. Let us call this Method 2.
As is evident, barring the switch between New Zealand and England, Method 1 does not change the existing ranks at all. However, if Method 2 were used, New Zealand would have had been at fourth place.
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