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India and Australia are still alive in the race to qualify for the WTC 2025 final, which is scheduled to take place at Lord’s in June next year.
What will happen if India and Australia finish with identical points on WTC points table? (Picture Credit: AP)
Australia beat India by 184 runs on Monday (December 30) to win the Boxing Day Test played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and take a 2-1 lead in the 2024-25 edition of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. The win in front of more than 70,000 fans on Monday has not only ignited Australia’s hopes of winning the first Border-Gavaskar Trophy since the 2014-15 edition but also boosted their chances of qualifying for the World Test Championship (WTC) final for the second season in a row. Australia played the WTC final in 2023 and managed to get the better of India by 209 runs at The Oval to win the title.
After losing the Boxing Day Test for the first time in 13 years against Australia at MCG, India can’t win the Border-Gavaskar Trophy now, but a win in the fifth and final Test, which is scheduled to take place at Sydney Cricket Ground from January 3-7, 2025, will help Rohit Sharma’s men retain the BGT. In addition to that, the first Test win at SCG since January 1978 will also help India keep alive its hopes of qualifying for the WTC 2025 final, which is scheduled to take place at Lord’s from June 11 to 15 next year.
India need nothing less than a win to keep its chances alive of qualifying for the WTC 2025 final. A draw or a defeat in Sydney will knock India out. India has 114 points in the WTC 2023-25 as of now, and a win will take Rohit Sharma-led side’s tally to 126 out of possible 228. 126/228 points will help India end the WTC 2023-25 cycle with 55.26 PCT%.
Australia has 118 points as of now, and the defending champions can finish with a maximum of 154 points out of a total of 228 if they win the next three matches. Three wins in the next three matches will guarantee Australia a place in the WTC 2025 final against South Africa. In fact, they will qualify if they win one of the remaining three Tests as well.
But if Australia lose against India in Sydney and then Sri Lanka beat them with a scoreline of 2-0 or 1-0, then India will finish above them in the points table and qualify for the WTC final at Lord’s next year.
There is also a possibility where both India and Australia can finish with identical points. And this will happen if India wins the Sydney Test and the Sri Lanka-Australia Test series in January-February finishes 0-0. In that case, India and Australia will end the WTC 2023-25 cycle with 126 points each out of a possible 228.
If both India and Australia finish with equal points (126) and PCT% (55.26), then the team with more series wins will reach the final. But since both India and Australia will end the 2023-25 WTC cycle with three series wins each, the team with the higher percentage of points earned in away matches will advance.
In the 2023-25 cycle, India played two matches in the West Indies (1 win, 1 draw), two in South Africa (1 win, 1 defeat), and five in Australia (2 wins, 2 defeats, 1 draw), and out of a possible 108 points, earned 56 (51.85% win). On the other hand, during the same period, Australia played five Tests in England (2 wins, 2 defeats, 1 draw), two Tests in New Zealand (2 wins), and two Tests in Sri Lanka (2 draws) and finished with 60 points out of 108 available (55.56 win%).