The World Test Championship: can your Test XI win it?

How it works

1. Draft. The same draft as the Test game: six spins (the first always from the Legends era), each drawing an era and a nation, give you eleven picks for fixed spots (two openers, three middle-order batters, a wicketkeeper, two all-rounders or spinners, and three fast bowlers).
2. The league. Your XI plays four Tests against four nations. A Test can be drawn. A win is worth two points and a draw one; five points out of the eight take you through, so one slip is allowed. Fall short and you are out.
3. The playoff. One Test against one of the two strongest nations in the game, Australia and South Africa. There are no draws here: if a Test is drawn, the side that led on first innings goes through. Lose and the run is over.
4. The final. The World XI, the same side you face in the five-Test series, with the same first-innings rule. Win it and you are world champions; win all six Tests and you are unbeaten champions, 6–0.

What decides a match

Every XI, yours and each nation’s, gets a team score from the same ratings as the Test game: batting, bowling and fielding, built from real career numbers. The gap between the two scores decides the match, with a small element of luck, so a weaker side can sometimes win. When the two sides are close, the Test is drawn. The luck is fixed for your XI: the same eleven always meet the same nations and get the same results.

Which nations you meet in the league is drawn for your XI. Draft a different eleven and the draw changes. The ratings are never shown, for you or for any nation, so the picks are your own judgement.

The seven nations

Each nation’s XI is the best side its own Test players can make in the game, picked by the same rule as our best-XI pages: players with 50 or more Tests, the strongest in each position, with one all-rounder. The sides are fixed and are the same for everyone. To judge your own picks, see what a good Test batting average and a good Test bowling average look like.

• Only seven nations can field an XI of players with 50 or more Tests from our data: Australia, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa and West Indies. Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are left out rather than filled with players who do not meet the rule.
• Our Test data is a hand-built set of the game’s great players, not every Test cricketer.

The World XI, in the final

The side every run has to beat at the end, the same one you face in the five-Test series. It does not change from game to game.

1. 1Don BradmanOPN
2. 2Sunil GavaskarOPN
3. 3Sachin TendulkarBAT
4. 4Brian LaraBAT
5. 5Joe RootBAT
6. 6Andy FlowerWK
7. 7Jacques KallisAR
8. 8Muttiah MuralitharanSPIN
9. 9Joel GarnerPACE
10. 10Wasim AkramPACE
11. 11Shaun PollockPACE

Share your run

Every result has a share card with your XI and the road you took, and a link a friend can open to see your eleven and start a run of their own.

Five-Test series · Pick any Test XI · Best all-time XIs