The ICC World Test Championship (WTC) is back in focus, with expansion and restructuring lined up for discussion at high‑level ICC meetings scheduled around the IPL 2026 Final in Ahmedabad. At the same time, the ICC will also talk about data monetisation, mobile gaming, global broadcast rights, and the crisis in Sri Lanka Cricket, making this period one of the most important for Test cricket and for cricket business.
ICC meetings around the IPL 2026 Final
The ICC’s next round of quarterly meetings will run from May 21 to May 31, 2026, with the main ICC Board meeting on May 30 and 31 in Ahmedabad, the same weekend as the IPL 2026 Final at the Narendra Modi Stadium. The Chief Executives’ Committee (CEC) will meet virtually on May 21, while the in‑person Board meeting will bring together top officials from all major cricket boards in Ahmedabad.
The IPL 2026 Final was moved from Bengaluru to Ahmedabad partly because of the higher seating capacity and partly to line it up with the ICC Board gathering, as BCCI and IPL officials wanted a larger venue that could host both the summit clash and the visiting ICC delegates. This link between the World Test Championship agenda and the IPL 2026 Final in Ahmedabad creates a powerful setting for discussions on WTC expansion, WTC structure, media rights and commercial plans.
What the WTC expansion proposal looks like
The key World Test Championship expansion idea on the table is to move from a 9‑team league to a 12‑team league from the next cycle, 2027–29. The remaining three ICC Full Members in Test cricket – Zimbabwe, Ireland and Afghanistan – are proposed to be added to the World Test Championship table so that all 12 Test‑playing nations are part of the same competition.
A special ICC working group, led by former New Zealand batter Roger Twose, has been studying World Test Championship expansion and WTC restructuring for the last year and will present its report to the ICC Board in this meeting window. Earlier, the ICC moved away from the idea of a two‑tier Test structure after pushback from boards such as the ECB, and instead asked this working group to focus on a single‑division WTC with 12 teams.
For Zimbabwe, Ireland and Afghanistan, joining the ICC World Test Championship would mean greater visibility, a proper place on the WTC points table, and a stronger reason for big teams to schedule Test tours against them. It would also allow the ICC to keep using “World Test Championship” and “WTC” as a central brand for all Test cricket, which is important for sponsors, broadcasters, and digital products.
One‑off Tests as part of the World Test Championship
The second major World Test Championship reform on the agenda is the idea of allowing one‑off Tests to carry WTC points. At present, only Test series of at least two matches count towards the WTC standings, which makes it hard to fit smaller teams like Zimbabwe, Ireland and Afghanistan into the busy Test calendar of big boards.
The working group has proposed that one‑off Tests between any two WTC nations should give World Test Championship points, so that boards can slot in a single Test before or after another tour and still have WTC value.
England is often used as an example in these discussions, because they have long home summers and sometimes play a five‑Test series against one team; adding a one‑off Test against Zimbabwe, Ireland or Afghanistan as a World Test Championship match would be much easier than squeezing in a long extra series. Overall, the “one‑off Test” proposal is seen as a way to make WTC expansion to 12 teams more practical in terms of time, money and scheduling.
How the current WTC points system works
To understand the debate on WTC expansion and one‑off Tests, it is important to note how the World Test Championship points system currently works. In the present cycle, teams get 12 points for a Test win, 4 points for a draw and 6 points for a tie, while a loss gives zero points. Teams can also lose points for slow over‑rates, with one point docked for each over short, which can hurt their WTC points tally.
However, the WTC standings are not based on raw total points but on percentage of points won (PCT) – that is, points earned divided by points possible from the matches a team has played. This percentage system was introduced during the Covid‑19 disruptions and has been kept so that teams that play different numbers of Tests can still be compared on one WTC table.
Because of this “percentage of points” method, World Test Championship expansion and the use of one‑off Tests have a direct impact on how easy or hard it becomes for teams to move up the WTC points table. If one team plays fewer Tests but wins a high share of them, that team can rank higher than a side that has played more matches but faced stronger opponents and dropped more points.
Why WTC restructuring is still uncertain
Even though the ICC is ready to hear the recommendations, there is no guarantee that WTC expansion and one‑off Tests will be approved in Ahmedabad. Reporting from ESPNcricinfo suggests that the ICC is likely to keep the current WTC structure for the next 2027–29 cycle, and that any move to 12 teams may be delayed or phased in slowly.
Some boards, especially those with busy schedules like England and Australia, are worried about fitting more World Test Championship fixtures into an already crowded Test calendar. Others fear that adding more teams without enough financial support could lead to one‑sided matches, player workload issues, and less time for high‑value series such as the Ashes or India–Australia.
There is also resistance to changing the WTC formula too often, as boards want sponsors and broadcasters to have a stable product rather than a format that keeps shifting every cycle. Because of these concerns, recent reporting notes that WTC expansion and one‑off Tests were not expected to be full items on the CEC virtual agenda, and that deeper discussions are more likely in the Board meeting around the IPL 2026 Final in Ahmedabad.
Fears that the WTC points table could be “gamed”
Because the World Test Championship standings are based on percentage of points, some officials and observers fear that Afghanistan, once in the WTC, could end up playing more often against lower‑ranked teams and still climb the WTC points table by winning most of those games. If major teams like Australia and England keep refusing bilateral Tests against Afghanistan, they may instead schedule more matches against sides such as Zimbabwe, Ireland, West Indies and Bangladesh, who are seen as relatively weaker at present.
At the same time, those weaker teams could also agree to one‑off Tests among themselves for WTC points, which would make it easier to keep a high percentage of points from a smaller pool of matches. Meanwhile, teams like India, Australia and England would still be playing long series against each other and against other strong sides, which often leads to more draws and losses and therefore lower percentages on the WTC table.
These concerns are part of the reason why some boards remain cautious about rushing into WTC expansion and one‑off Tests without a deeper look at schedule balance, strength of opposition and possible tweaks in the WTC points system. There is a clear desire to grow the World Test Championship, but also a strong wish inside the ICC to keep the WTC points table fair and credible for all teams.
Data monetisation and mobile gaming on the ICC agenda
While WTC expansion, one‑off Tests and WTC restructuring dominate the cricket side of the conversation, the ICC CEC meeting and Board meeting around the IPL 2026 Final will also take up big commercial questions such as data monetisation and mobile gaming. Reports say that the ICC wants to explore new ways to package live data, ball‑by‑ball feeds and analytics, and to sell these rights across betting, fantasy, broadcast and digital platforms in a more structured way.
Mobile gaming is another key talking point, with the ICC looking to build stronger official games and partnerships for cricket on phones and tablets, in order to diversify revenue beyond traditional television broadcast deals. As younger audiences consume cricket content through apps, games and short videos, the ICC sees data monetisation and mobile gaming as natural extensions for the “ICC World Test Championship”, “World Test Championship points table” and other big event brands.
These commercial discussions will sit alongside WTC expansion on the ICC agenda in Ahmedabad, because any change in the World Test Championship structure – including more teams and more matches – would also affect how much cricket data and gaming content the ICC has to sell. From an SEO view, this is where keywords like “ICC data monetisation”, “ICC mobile gaming”, and “World Test Championship digital rights” become important for future coverage of these meetings.
Broadcast rights and the JioStar deal till 2027
Another major agenda item linked to the ICC meetings around the IPL 2026 Final is the future of ICC global broadcast rights, especially in India. At present, JioStar (a Reliance‑controlled broadcaster) holds the Indian media rights for ICC events in the 2024–2027 cycle under a deal worth around 3.1 billion US dollars.
In late 2025, reports surfaced that JioStar had told the ICC it may not be able to continue for the last two years of the deal because of heavy financial losses, forcing the ICC to think about contingency plans and even fresh bidding for 2026–2029 media rights. However, soon after those stories, both the ICC and JioStar issued a joint statement confirming that the contract remains in force and that JioStar will stay on as ICC’s official media rights partner in India until 2027.
Even with that statement, the issue of long‑term ICC cricket media rights in India and globally is high on the ICC Board agenda, as the market keeps changing and as digital platforms, World Test Championship streaming, and mobile consumption grow. The outcome of the WTC expansion discussion could also influence future rights packages, because a 12‑team World Test Championship with one‑off Tests would produce more content for broadcasters and streaming platforms to offer under the “World Test Championship” and “WTC Live” umbrella.
In short, the ICC meetings wrapped around the IPL 2026 Final in Ahmedabad will bring together many threads: World Test Championship expansion to 12 teams, one‑off Tests, the WTC points system, Afghanistan’s place in Test cricket, data monetisation, mobile gaming, media rights with JioStar, and the governance crisis in Sri Lanka Cricket.
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