England must engage with the WTC's oddities, not fight them

The World Test Championship might be fundamentally flawed but after three missed attempts to reach the final on home soil, it is time for England to take it seriously. Ben Stokes believes it is "utterly confusing" but he must have looked on with envy as Temba Bavuma lifted the golden mace at Lord's last week, capping a comeback victory that was celebrated throughout South Africa.

The third WTC final was the best yet, one that underlined the significance of a concept that has added plenty to Test cricket despite its flaws. The quality of cricket was incredibly high, embodied in the performances of Pat Cummins, Aiden Markram and Kagiso Rabada, and the occasion was clearly enhanced by the jeopardy created by a one-off final.

But England's attitude towards the WTC has been ambivalent. The ECB's managing director of men's cricket believes it is "hard to understand", the chairman has called for it to be "fairer and more competitive", and the chief executive said last week that it is "not the be-all and end-all" when compared to the results of five-Test series against India and Australia.

These are not just sour grapes from a team that has finished fourth, fourth and fifth in the first three cycles. Even the WTC's most vocal proponents would accept that it is a long way from perfect: no sporting league with any competitive integrity should be superimposed onto a fixture list decided between individual boards, as this one effectively is.

The uneven, unequal fixture list has been a clear frustration for England: the percentage-point system effectively penalises them for playing longer series against high-quality opponents. Still, Australia and India have overcome similar scheduling to reach two finals each out of three; England, by contrast, have never come close.

But the reality is that for all its flaws, the WTC has been a success: it has created a showpiece final for the Test format, which in turn has provided context and incentives that did not previously exist for smaller nations. For New Zealand's and South Africa's players, winning the WTC was a bigger achievement than any single series win of their careers.

England must accept that they will have to adapt accordingly. The ECB has made the case that the over-rate penalties they have faced have been outsized, considering that they have only drawn one of their last 36 Tests, but every other team has been able to get through their overs more quickly. Their complaints will be taken more seriously from a position of strength.

They have also developed a bad habit of ending series poorly: in four of their last five series, they have won the first Test but lost the last. Stokes has attributed that to mental and physical fatigue, but there have been hints of complacency too, not least against Sri Lanka at The Oval last year.

It was a series that England needed to win 3-0 to retain realistic ambitions of reaching the final, but their performance suggested a team who considered the match to be a dead rubber: they handed a debut to an incredibly raw fast bowler, and were bowled out in 34 overs in a frenetic second innings. It was anything but ruthless.

The great curiosity of England's position is that they appear to have taken a sudden interest in the ICC's Test rankings, despite the WTC rendering them almost irrelevant. Stokes texted Brendon McCullum and Rob Key to say, "One more place to go," when England briefly rose to second last month, and Key has publicly targeted the No. 1 spot.

It is a strange focus as a new WTC cycle starts, akin to an international football team talking about the FIFA rankings at the start of a World Cup. England's public stance is that they focus on winning every Test match they play in, and that winning enough will get them into the final: "As a group, we're probably not looking that far ahead," Brydon Carse said on Wednesday.

England's fixture list in the 2025-27 cycle is frontloaded. If they emerge from their next ten Tests - five against India, five in Australia - with a winning record, then they should be well positioned for their four remaining series: three Tests apiece against Pakistan and New Zealand at home, three in South Africa, and two in Bangladesh.

The ECB is keen to retain hosting rights for the WTC final, and the indications are that it will do so at next month's ICC conference in Singapore. If that happens, it will provide their side with yet another prime opportunity to reach the final in home conditions; to do so, they must engage with the WTC's oddities rather than fighting against them.