World Test Championship Points System Explained
By the Live Cricket Zone editorial team · Last reviewed 24 October 2026
For most of its history, Test cricket had no competition structure. Bilateral series were played for their own sake, and the only overall measure was the ICC ranking. The World Test Championship, first played over 2019 to 2021, changed that. It turns most bilateral Test series into one league that runs for two years and ends in a one-off final between the top two teams.
Who takes part
Nine Full Member teams play in the Championship: Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka and West Indies. Other Test-playing nations still play Test matches, but those matches do not count towards the WTC table.
The cycle
Each cycle lasts about two years. In that time every team plays six series, three at home and three away, against six of the other eight teams. Series can be anywhere from two to five Tests long, depending on what the two boards agree. So the teams do not all play each other, and they do not all play the same number of matches. That single fact explains most of how the points system is designed.
Points per match
| Result | Points for each team |
|---|---|
| Win | 12 |
| Tie | 6 |
| Draw | 4 |
| Loss | 0 |
A draw is worth a third of a win. That is deliberate: it rewards a team that saves a match, but it gives sides a reason to chase victory rather than settle for a draw. A tie, which is very rare in Tests, splits the winner's points evenly.
Why the table is ranked by percentage
Teams play different numbers of matches, so raw points would favour whoever happened to play the most Tests. Instead the table is ordered by percentage of points won, often shown as PCT. It is the points a team has actually earned divided by the points it could have earned had it won every match, shown as a percentage.
Example (invented numbers): a team has played 10 Tests, winning 6, drawing 2 and losing 2. It has 6 × 12 + 2 × 4 = 80 points from a possible 10 × 12 = 120, so its percentage is 80 ÷ 120 × 100 = 66.67. A second team has played only 4 Tests, winning 3 and losing 1: 36 points from 48, or 75.00. The second team ranks higher despite having fewer points, because it has dropped a smaller share of what it played for.
This was not the original design. In the first cycle every series was worth the same 120 points regardless of length, so a match in a two-Test series was worth 60 points and a match in a five-Test series 24. That made individual Tests unequal in value. From the second cycle onwards the ICC switched to fixed points per match and ranking by percentage, which is the system described here.
Over-rate deductions
Teams are expected to bowl their overs at a set rate. If a side finishes a match behind the required rate, after allowances for time lost to injuries, reviews and other stoppages, it loses Championship points: one point for every over it is short. The deduction comes off the team's points total, so it also lowers its percentage. These penalties are separate from any match fines on players, and over a full cycle they have been enough to change who reaches the final.
The final
When the cycle ends, the two teams with the highest percentages play a single Test for the Championship. Every final so far has been played at a neutral venue in England, and a reserve day is set aside to make up time lost to weather. If the final ends in a draw or a tie, the two teams share the title. New Zealand won the first final in 2021, Australia the second in 2023 and South Africa the third in 2025.
Reading the table during a cycle
- Early in a cycle the percentages swing wildly, because one result is a large share of a small number of matches. A team at 100 after two Tests has not done anything a team at 50 after twelve cannot overtake.
- Look at matches remaining. A team with many home Tests still to play has more chances to move than one that has finished its fixtures.
- Draws hurt a percentage more than they appear to. Each draw earns a third of a win, so a run of draws pulls a team's percentage down towards 33.
- Teams level on percentage are separated by the tie-breakers in the competition's regulations, the first of which is the number of series won.
How the WTC relates to the ICC rankings
The WTC table and the ICC Test team ranking measure different things. The ranking covers all Tests over several years, weights the opposition's strength and decays older results, as our rankings guide explains. The WTC counts only the current cycle's series and gives every match the same value whoever the opponent is. A team that plays a demanding schedule can rank highly in the ICC table while sitting lower in the WTC, and the reverse also happens.
What it changed on the field
Because every match carries points, dead rubbers have largely disappeared. A team that has already won a series still has points to play for in the final Test. Captains have also become more willing to set up a result with declarations, since a win is worth three times a draw. Our guide to the follow-on and declarations shows how those decisions are made.