Understanding WTC Points and Teams Journey

ICC introduced PCT, a new term in Cricketing World, to rank the competing teams in ICC World Test Championship. The same value is being used by ICC, and around the world, to measure the progress of competing teams on their road to WTC-2023 Final. PCT, being a new term in Cricketing World, brought a fair bit of confusion, misinterpretation and mystery about it.

In simple words, PCT is the percentage of points won in the matches a team has played till a certain point. It is like awarding 66.66 PCT to Team-Red for winning 2 out of 3 matches and 60.00 PCT to Team-Blue for winning 3 out 5 matches (when both of the teams are supposed to play 10 matches in Total). In such a case, PCT would be neither mathematically incorrect nor the right measure of the progress of the two teams — Team Red would carry more PCT even after earning lesser points.

How does it affect the journey of each of team in WTC-23? To discover that answer, it is pertinent to take a closer look, first, at ICC World Test Championship 2021–2023.

Related: WTC 2021–23 Points Calculator

Matches

All the teams competing in World Test Championship 2021–2023 are scheduled to play a Test series against 6 other teams — 3 at their home and 3 away from home. However, the total number of Tests and the number of Tests to be played away and at home by each team are not identical.

Points

Teams will earn 12 points for each win, 6 points for a tie and 4 points for a draw. However, due to unequal number of Tests to be played by each team, the total points available to each team are not equal. The proportion of home and away Tests for each team is not identical either.

To address this disparity, instead of ranking the teams simply by points earned by each team, ICC decided to rank the teams by the percentage of available points they won from the matches they have played — referred as PCT in WTC Points Table.

Impact

That, in effect, changed the real value of points earned from a Test for each team. For instance, Pakistan and Australia both won 4 points for a draw. However, the percentage value of those 4 points were not identical for the two teams. For Australia, those 4 points equated to 1.75% as they have 228 points(19 Tests x 12 points) in total to contest in this WTC Cycle [ 4 / 228 = 1.75%]. Whereas, for Pakistan, those 4 points translated into 2.38% [ 4 / 168 = 2.38%] as the total points they are going to contest in this WTC cycle is 168 (14 Tests x 12 points).

Due to use of this calculation method, not every win and draw carry the same weight for each team in WTC; to the extent that the two teams involved in a drawn Test will not gain identical Net PCT from that same result. The following table shows the Net PCT each team will earn in case of a win or a draw, or they will lose in case of playing a draw.

Takeaway

The PCT based points table circulated after each Test is not factually incorrect. However, measuring or predicting the progress of the competing teams based on PCT would be as incomplete as doing it on the basis of points earned by each team from each Test, in the same table. Net PCT would be a better method to gage how much a team would gain or lose from a particular possible result.