WTC THAT NEVER WERE

The World Test Championships that never were: Stats and Takeaways

by Scott Oliver • Last updated on Fri, Mar 6, 2020, 09:16 PM

Australia has been the most consistent and dominant side in Test cricket in the post-Packer era © Getty

In Part One of our thought-experiment - "What if there had been a World Test Championship (WTC) for all of the modern, post-Packer cricket?" - we set out the methodology (how to divide up the historical sequence of bilateral series, and what to do with one-off games, duplicated series and so forth) and examined the first five hypothetical WTC cycles. In Part Two, we looked at the final six alt-history WTCs, bringing it up to date.

Reverse-engineering history is difficult, and the conclusions from this thought-experiment are therefore semi-arbitrary, although not entirely so. As explained in Part One, there is a logic to the way the linear chronology of series has been divided into WTC cycles - essentially, ensuring the maximum spread of series while mindful of minimising the number of duplicate series (same teams, same country), which, where possible (the sum total of games being six or fewer), have been consolidated or combined into de facto single series, if only to ensure that all matches count and one is not forced to make an even more arbitrary choice between duplicate series. Where the sum of games in such duplicate series was greater than six, we took the longer series (this only applied to Australia vs Pakistan in WTC1). Where the duplicate series were of the same length and yet greater than six matches in total, we only counted the first series (this only applied to England vs West Indies in WTC3 and England vs Australia in WTC10).

WTC final positions

Teams	WTC1	WTC2	WTC3	WTC4	WTC5	WTC6	WTC7	WTC8	WTC9	WTC10	WTC11
AUSTRALIA	3	5	2	1	1	1	1	2	1	1	3
BANGLADESH	-	-	-	-	-	10	10	8	X	9	7
ENGLAND	5	7	4	7	5	6	2	5	3	7	5
INDIA	6	3	6	3	7	7	4	4	4	5	1
NEW ZEALAND	4	4	5	8	3	4	5	6	8	6	4
PAKISTAN	2	2	3	4	4	3	6	X	5	2	9
SOUTH AFRICA	-	-	-	5	2	2	7	3	2	3	2
SRI LANKA	X	6	7	6	6	5	3	1	6	4	6
WEST INDIES	1	1	1	2	8	8	8	7	7	8	8
ZIMBABWE	-	-	-	X	9	9	9	-	X	X	X

The only possible 'optimal rationalisation' of this would need a WTC already in place, in which ICC mandates the everyone-plays-everyone structure. FTP schedules would certainly be different given such incentives for the 'big countries' to play the supposed weaker teams. As it was, Sri Lanka, then Zimbabwe, then Bangladesh had to work hard for matches against the established powers - especially for more than one-off games - which inevitably leaves a few gaps, or 'missing series' in the schedules. Such are the limitations of the exercise, the demands of being faithful to reality. In most instances, they had little or no bearing on the league table for each WTC cycle.

As would be expected, Australia dominates the alt-history WTC, winning the round-robin stage on six of eleven occasions (the others were West Indies with three and Sri Lanka and India with one apiece). Australia twice came runners-up, too, meaning they made eight out of the eleven finals, as well as two third-place finishes. They have never finished below England.

However, of those eight finals - and this is where a degree of artistic licence enters the picture (albeit not entirely untethered to venue location and recent form against their opponents) - only four were won, with consecutive defeats to Sri Lanka (in Dhaka), South Africa (at Lord's) and the mercurial, unpredictable, anything-can-happen, odds-upsetting Pakistanis (Auckland) and a draw with West Indies in WTC that allowed the former to win the title by virtue of having topped the league stage. It was their third straight title.

Overall average PPS - WTC series

Teams	Av.PPS	P	W	D	L	series win %
AUSTRALIA	70.66	115	66	17	32	57.39
SOUTH AFRICA	67.87	82	48	15	19	58.54
INDIA	56.31	100	42	22	36	42
PAKISTAN	55.02	90	37	24	29	41.11
SRI LANKA	53.64	94	36	19	39	38.3
ENGLAND	52.47	111	49	15	47	44.14
NEW ZEALAND	48.44	103	34	24	45	33.01
WEST INDIES	47.55	99	37	16	46	37.37
ZIMBABWE	23.22	27	3	3	21	11.11
BANGLADESH	17.39	43	3	5	35	6.98

All calculations from 01-01-80 to 20-03-19

Overall average PPS - All series

WTC final positions

Teams	WTC1	WTC2	WTC3	WTC4	WTC5	WTC6	WTC7	WTC8	WTC9	WTC10	WTC11
AUSTRALIA	3	5	2	1	1	1	1	2	1	1	3
BANGLADESH	-	-	-	-	-	10	10	8	X	9	7
ENGLAND	5	7	4	7	5	6	2	5	3	7	5
INDIA	6	3	6	3	7	7	4	4	4	5	1
NEW ZEALAND	4	4	5	8	3	4	5	6	8	6	4
PAKISTAN	2	2	3	4	4	3	6	X	5	2	9
SOUTH AFRICA	-	-	-	5	2	2	7	3	2	3	2
SRI LANKA	X	6	7	6	6	5	3	1	6	4	6
WEST INDIES	1	1	1	2	8	8	8	7	7	8	8
ZIMBABWE	-	-	-	X	9	9	9	-	X	X	X

Overall average PPS - WTC series

Teams	Av.PPS	P	W	D	L	series win %
AUSTRALIA	70.66	115	66	17	32	57.39
SOUTH AFRICA	67.87	82	48	15	19	58.54
INDIA	56.31	100	42	22	36	42
PAKISTAN	55.02	90	37	24	29	41.11
SRI LANKA	53.64	94	36	19	39	38.3
ENGLAND	52.47	111	49	15	47	44.14
NEW ZEALAND	48.44	103	34	24	45	33.01
WEST INDIES	47.55	99	37	16	46	37.37
ZIMBABWE	23.22	27	3	3	21	11.11
BANGLADESH	17.39	43	3	5	35	6.98

All calculations from 01-01-80 to 20-03-19

Overall average PPS - All series

Teams	P	W	D	L	series win %
AUSTRALIA	126	71	19	36	56.34
SOUTH AFRICA	94	57	15	22	60.39
INDIA	116	52	25	39	44.83
PAKISTAN	111	49	25	37	44.14
SRI LANKA	115	43	23	49	37.39
ENGLAND	127	57	21	49	44.88
NEW ZEALAND	123	44	29	50	35.77
WEST INDIES	106	40	18	48	37.73
ZIMBABWE	58	6	7	43	10.34
BANGLADESH	57	4	8	45	7.02

The only series results excluded from second chart are (a) one-off games, IND vs AFG and IRE vs PAK in 2018; (b) series truncated by terror events, PAK v NZ, 2002 and PAK v SL, 2009 [NZ v B in 2019, although truncated, was 2-0 in best-of-three at the time]

Pakistan have had three final appearances - behind only Australia, West Indies and South Africa - with two more third-place and two fourth-place finishes from their ten WTCs. (They were suspended from WTC8 mid-competition after the Lahore terror attack prevented them from playing more than half of the other nations in the cycle. Their home series against New Zealand in WTC6 was also excluded after it was truncated in the wake of a bombing. However, New Zealand against Bangladesh in 2018, which had its last match cancelled after the Christchurch shooting, was included as is, with the cancelled game deemed a draw, since NZ had already won the series, and already won a two-match series at home to Bangladesh 2-0, so a cancellation would have helped New Zealand - and lowered Bangladesh's points haul - giving them a 120/0 split rather than 104/8 from the five-match 'combination series'.)

Six times out of ten times Pakistan finished above India, and they have a better "average finishing position" (AFP) ranking - second only to Australia, in fact. However, India's average Points Per Series (PPS) across the WTC cycles is superior to their neighbour's: 56.31 plays 55.02.

West Indies' early dominance - only two series lost in the first four WTCs - and subsequent decline sees their AFP ranking come in at a surprisingly high sixth position (above England, New Zealand, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh respectively), despite them not finishing above seventh in the most recent seven WTCs (eighth on five occasions). However, famine now outnumbering feast, their PPS average across the cycles (47.55) is lower than both New Zealand's (48.44) and England's (52.47).

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The World Test Championships that never were: Stats and Takeaways

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