It gets worse

At least it gets worse if you're English. If you're Australian, it's a bounteous day of joyful riches or something similarly upbeat.

Australia have also regained the catchily-named Alternative Test Cricket World Championship title. Yes, they're the Alternative Test Cricket World Champions. We're sure that they're delighted.

To bring you up to speed, England were in possession of the title having defeated Pakistan in their previous series - Pakistan having only gained the title by beating England at home, earlier in the year.

Whatever. The important point is that England have lost something else!

England win Alternative Test Cricket World Championship bout

We only realised last week. England are now the Alternative Test Cricket World Champions. Pakistan were champions. England beat them in a Test series, so now England are champions. Let's all celebrate with a cup of tea and a bit of a read about cricket.

This also means that the Ashes is also an Alternative Test Cricket World Championship bout. It's okay to start talking about the Ashes now because, you know, there's only the Champions Trophy in between now and then.

Does the title Champions' Trophy imply that everyone's a champion. It's like being crap at sport at school again: Everyone's a winner. Even Fat Kid.

"Well played Fat Kid. Just how did you give yourself internal haemorraging during rounders, incidentally?"

This post looks bare. We need an Alternative Test Cricket World Championship emblem or something.

The Alternative Test Cricket World Championship

This is how it works. People often have a bit of a problem coming to terms with it, but it's really quite simple. Basically, the Alternative Test Cricket World Championship works like a boxing title. To win the title, you must beat the current champions in a Test series - not in a match - in a series. If the series is drawn, then the champions retain their title.

So who are the current Alternative Test Cricket World Champions? Well big thanks to The Scientician because working this out is just the kind of thing that we can't be bothered doing. (We wouldn't have known where to start - so we didn't.) 

The Scientician traced the path of the title from the very first Test series between England and Australia back in 1877. The full table can be seen in this post.

Pakistan are currently the Alternative Test Cricket World Champions having beaten England late last year - England having prised the title off Australia in the Ashes. The Scientician is 98% certain that Pakistan are the current holders, which is more than good enough for us because even after our very best effort we'd only be about 4% certain that we were right.

The upshot of this is that the upcoming Test series between England and Pakistan is an Alternative Test Cricket World Championship bout. If England can win, they will reclaim the title.

Come on. That's better than it being 'an indicator for the upcoming Ashes series'.

This whole thing was inspired/stolen from the Unofficial World Championship which does much the same thing for football. We should probably mention that.

Some Alternative Test Cricket World Championship analysis

Statistic-tastic. Let's all work out standard deviation and do some hypothesis testing. Come on... Everybody...

Maybe we should start simply. Here's a table of all the Alternative Test Cricket World Champions down the years:


And here's a pie chart of how long each nation has held the title:

So what stands out? For us there are three major talking points:

1: New Zealand have never been Alternative Test Cricket World Champions

2: Zimbabwe have! They beat then champions, India, in 1998 and held on until Australia beat them in 1999

3: The Windies held onto the title for a whopping 14 years between 1981 and 1995. Whopping, you hear.

How the Alternative Test Cricket World Championship works.