Former New Zealand captain Kane Williamson voiced for the introduction of designated windows for international cricket and believes the change could turn the World Test Championship (WTC) into a “more level competition”. The International Cricket Council’s (ICC) cricket committee is set to meet in Zimbabwe soon where it will consider proposals to tweak the WTC’s format ahead of the next (2025-27) cycle.
“It comes back to scheduling. I love Test cricket and I’d love to see it stay and I’d love to see it be a pathway for young cricketers still, alongside the T20 format. If you can prioritise windows where teams are playing each other consistently and somewhat evenly, then I think it just makes it [the WTC] a slightly more level competition,” Williamson told ESPNcricinfo.
“Naturally, the fact that it’s (WTC schedule) different for each team is not ideal. Any time you get the opportunity to review after a two-year Test Championship window, to try and tweak it a little bit, that’s fine. It’s still in its infancy, really, as a competition, so you’re always going to look at those things… It’s tricky though: there’s 12 months in a year, right? That’s difficult.”
Williamson, who led New Zealand to the inaugural WTC title, believes tweaking the rules of WTC will give it more context. “You put a tournament in front of somebody or a team, and they’re always quite keen to win it… Context is something that’s been spoken about for a while now, and it is great to see that there’s an effort to do that. It’s just how you keep tinkering it because there’s so many different opinions with teams, who they play and how you sort of continue to make it level,” he said.
He also put the WTC final win against India as one of the great moments in New Zealand’s history. He said, “The context now in Test cricket has certainly increased the effort and results. We don’t see draws any more, basically, in Test cricket, so every team’s pushing for a result when there’s something on it. For us as a country, winning the inaugural Test Championship final, it was really special and a great moment in our history.
South Africa will play Australia in the final of the WTC 2023-25 cycle.
