The World Test Championship Table Has Bangladesh Above India

A fortnight of Test cricket has left the 2025-27 World Test Championship table in a shape worth looking at properly.

The standings

Updated to matches played on 23 August 2026, by percentage of available points won:

1. Australia 10 played, 8 won, 2 lost, 96 points, 80.00%
2. South Africa 4 played, 3 won, 1 lost, 36 points, 75.00%
3. New Zealand 6 played, 4 won, 1 lost, 1 drawn, 52 points, 72.22%
4. Bangladesh 6 played, 3 won, 2 lost, 1 drawn, 40 points, 55.56%
5. India 10 played, 5 won, 4 lost, 1 drawn, 64 points, 53.33%
6. Sri Lanka 5 played, 1 won, 2 lost, 2 drawn, 20 points, 33.33%
7. England 14 played, 5 won, 8 lost, 1 drawn, 50 points, 29.76%
8. West Indies 12 played, 2 won, 8 lost, 2 drawn, 30 points, 20.83%
9. Pakistan 7 played, 2 won, 5 lost, 16 points, 19.05%

Why the order looks strange, and why it is not

The table is ranked on percentage of points won, not on points. That is the only sane way to compare sides who have played four Tests with sides who have played fourteen, and it produces two results that look wrong at first glance.

South Africa are second on four matches. Win three of four and you will sit near the top of any percentage table. It says very little yet, and it will move a long way in either direction.

England are seventh with the most points of anyone outside the top three. Fifty points from fourteen Tests is a lot of cricket for a modest return, and the innings win over Pakistan barely moved the percentage because it was one result in a large denominator. A side that plays more Tests has more chances to gain and more chances to dilute.

Bangladesh above India

Bangladesh sit fourth on 55.56 per cent, India fifth on 53.33. The margin is small and both have played very different schedules, six matches against ten.

But it is not an accident of arithmetic. Bangladesh beat Australia in Australia inside this cycle, which is worth twelve points and is the single hardest thing any of these nine teams can do. The Mackay defeat cost them nothing in percentage terms that the Darwin win had not already earned.

What the table cannot tell you

Percentage tables reward consistency and punish volume, and they say nothing about who you played or where. Australia's 80 per cent is the most convincing figure on the list, because ten matches is a real sample. South Africa's 75 per cent is the least, because four is not.

The other thing it hides is timing. The cycle runs to 2027, and every side listed here has a schedule ahead of them that is not the schedule behind them.

For what our own records can and cannot say about Test cricket, our how we work page sets out the spans we hold.