Boards will not be happy with a second-tier tag on their team
The International Cricket Council (ICC) is likely to expand the World Test Championship (WTC) from a nine-team single division competition to a 12-team two-division tournament from the 2027-29 cycle, according to a report by The Guardian.
The WTC in its fourth edition with the 2025-27 cycle after South Africa won the WTC mace by beating Australia by six wickets in the 2025 final at the Lord’s.
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The new system of the WTC will bring in 12 Test-playing status divided into two divisions with six teams rather than selecting the top nine ranked teams at the end of each cycle.
The criteria for the promotion and relegation of teams from the top division is likely to be decided by the end of the year.
In order to bring together ideas and observations from different boards, the ICC has appointed an eight-member team, headed by ICC chief executive Sanjog Gupta. The working team is given till the end of the year to submit its recommendations.
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The idea to introduce a two-division model like football leagues around the world has been floated around during the 2023-25 cycle. While former players such as Ravi Shastri and Michael Holding were in support of the model for being able to encourage meritocracy and competitiveness among the Test-playing nations, while others such as Australian legend Ian Chappell were heavily critical of the system.
In his article for ESPNCricinfo, Chappell slammed the ICC, calling the body an ‘event-manager’ and wrote that the two-tier system should have existed from a long time ago.
However, there are multiple challenges that need to be addressed by the ICC before it introduces a model of such high significance.
Currently, the lion’s share of the broadcasting revenue goes to the BCCI, Cricket Australia (CA) and England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) which is evident through the five-match Test series between the ‘Big Three’ of world cricket.
Boards with lesser revenues have found it difficult to schedule Test series as the likes of West Indies, New Zealand and Pakistan have preferred to play three Tests. Most of these nations will not be happy with their second-tier status as they have been preparing pitches with the intention to achieve results at any cost. Recently, Pakistan went against their tradition of playing pacer-friendly pitches and had curated rank-turners during the series against Australia and West Indies which produced few results in their favour.
While the likes of South Africa and Bangladesh have mostly preferred two-match series.
This has emerged as the biggest point of criticism directed at New Zealand and South Africa when they qualified for the WTC final in 2021 and 2025 respectively.
The qualification criteria for the final also needs to change as teams with the higher winning percentage got to the summit clash as opposed to a straightforward idea such as point accrued through wins and draws. The ICC has introduced point deductions for slow over rates to make things interesting but it might not be the final solution for a fundamental issue.
Smaller Test nations such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Ireland and Zimbabwe need to be incentivised by the ICC which will be vital for the overall competitiveness as well as nations creating bigger talent pools.
The four-day Test idea has also been proposed by some of the big names as it circumvents the problem with hosting just two five-day games and fit in more matches in the same series. If the ICC approves of this idea and sanctions it, it needs to convince the richer Boards to also take part in the series with four-day games.
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