Exciting to play in the final of the first World Test Championship: Williamson

Tags: New Zealand, Kane Stuart Williamson, World Test Championship

Published on: Feb 03, 2021

New Zealand captain Kane Williamson has stated that his team is thrilled to be part of the inaugural World Test Championship final as the tournament has added context to Test cricket. New Zealand, on Tuesday, confirmed their place in the WTC final with 70 percentage points after Australia decided to postpone their tour of South Africa owing to the growing COVID-19 cases in the latter nation.

Williamson told Youtube channel ‘Sports Today’, “It’s exciting to play in the final of the first (World) Test Championship. Adding Test Championship has added context to Test cricket and it has been a really interesting move.”

The New Zealand skipper further added, “I think we have seen that more so in recent months, where sides have made players benefit from opportunities to advance themselves into the final and that’s really exciting.”

New Zealand will mostly face either India or England, who will feature in a four-Test series starting Friday. If India can win the series with two wins, they will face New Zealand in the WTC final. England would need to win three Tests to make the final ahead of India. Australia can only make the WTC final if the India-England series is drawn or India or England fail to win more than one or two matches respectively.

Kane Williamson is the number one ranked Test batsman in the world with 919 points in the ICC Test rankings. He has been in brilliant form over the last few Tests, notching up a career-best 251 against West Indies and 129 and 238 against Pakistan.

The WTC final will be held at Lord’s from June 18-22. It was earlier scheduled to be played around June 10. However, with the IPL final also likely to played around the same time, there could be quarantine issues for players.

A BCCI source told PTI, "The WTC Final will now be played from June 18-22 and June 23 will be the reserve day. As background we pushed it back to allow for any quarantine that may be imposed, particularly given the close proximity to the end of the IPL."

--By A Cricket Correspondent

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