ICC Test Championship

The ICC Test Championship is a notional competition run by the International Cricket Council in the sport of cricket for the 10 nations that play Test cricket.

In essence, after every Test series, the two teams involved receive points based on a mathematical formula. The total of each team's points total is divided by the total number of matches to give a 'rating', and the Test-playing teams are ranked by order of rating (this can be shown in a table)

The points for winning a Test match or series are greater than the team's rating, increasing the rating, and the points for losing the match or series are always less than the rating, reducing the rating. A drawn match between higher and lower rated teams will benefit the lower-rated team at the expense of the higher-rated team. An 'average' team that wins as often as it loses while playing a mix of stronger and weaker teams should have a rating of 100.

As of December 22, 2005, Australia lead the ICC Test Championship with a rating of 128, with India in second place ranked with 115, narrowly ahead of England's 113. The lowest rated team, Bangladesh, have a rating of just 5.

Ranking of teams

ICC Test rankings

Rank	Team	Matches	Points	Rating
1	Australia	47	6064	129
2	India	34	3907	115
3	England	42	4763	113
4	Pakistan	30	3100	103
5	New Zealand	26	2598	100
6	South Africa	39	3879	99
7	Sri Lanka	31	2976	96
8	West Indies	36	2615	73
9	Zimbabwe	21	563	27
10	Bangladesh	28	146	5