Zimbabwe are piling up 500s. The ICC is about to lock them out till 2031

The World Test Championship looks set to stay a nine-team club until 2031. As ESPNcricinfo reported on Saturday, the ICC board is expected to back its own recommendation at an all-day meeting in Bali on Sunday: no change for the 2027-29 and 2029-31 cycles. ANI carried the same line a few hours later.

That would bury, for now, the plan from an ICC working group led by Roger Twose to put all 12 Full Members into one division. Zimbabwe, Ireland and Afghanistan backed it hardest. They are the three Full Members outside the WTC, and they would stay outside for at least five more years.

According to ESPNcricinfo, the fight already happened once. The Chief Executives' Committee sat for more than four hours on Saturday, and the three outsiders made "impassioned pleas", arguing their Test development is being held back and that with no promotion or relegation they have no route into the top nine.

They had one loud ally. Cricket South Africa chief executive Pholetsi Moseki is reported to have spoken strongly for expansion. Where the BCCI and Cricket Australia stand is unclear, and the ECB is said to be wary of the travel and the cost.

The objection underneath it all is money. The WTC is not really an ICC event: members organise and pay for the series bilaterally, and the ICC only runs the final. Boards doubt that more teams bring more commercial value, so nobody is rushing to host Ireland. The one lifeline left, both outlets say, is a slim chance of a 10-team compromise built around Zimbabwe's appetite for Tests.

The timing is cruel. On Saturday Zimbabwe Cricket also announced that head coach Justin Sammons will step down after the current Test against Afghanistan in Sharjah, ESPNcricinfo reported, to go home to South Africa and his family. He was contracted until the end of 2028.

Under Sammons, Zimbabwe won three Tests, including their first away win since 2021 in Sylhet, and back-to-back innings wins at home over Afghanistan and Bangladesh. He leaves with the side on top in his final match.

Keeping the WTC at nine is defensible as accounting. As cricket, it is hard to argue with what is happening in Sharjah this week.

Zimbabwe have batted three times in this series and scored 504, 523 for 5 and 339. That is 1,366 runs at roughly 54.6 per wicket, on our count from the scorecards. Afghanistan, who made 514 in the first Test, are 159 for 6 and 180 behind in the second. These are not sides that need protecting from Test cricket. They need fixtures.

And fixtures are the real story. In the fixture list CricIntel tracks from August to the end of November 2026, the nine WTC teams play 19 men's Tests among themselves. The three outsiders get three, and all three involve Afghanistan: one against Bangladesh and two against Zimbabwe. Ireland have none. A nine-team table locks that gap in for five more years, because WTC series are the ones boards plan their calendars around.

Here is the sharpest detail. England's first Test tour of Zimbabwe in three decades, with a Test at Victoria Falls, is now pencilled in for 2030, the ANI and ESPNcricinfo reports say. Under a nine-team WTC running to 2031, that historic Test would count for nothing in the table. England would be spending a week of their cycle on a match with no points in it, which is exactly the kind of fixture boards quietly drop.

Our call: if the board wants a compromise, the 10-team option is the one with numbers behind it, and Zimbabwe have spent this month making that case with the bat. For the rest of this Test, the side with a 180-run lead and three days left are favourites, and that side is Zimbabwe.

The board's decision is due on Sunday in Bali, alongside a McKinsey-led strategic review of the three formats. If it goes as expected, the next chance to reopen the question is the 2031 cycle. Meanwhile Afghanistan resume on 159 for 6 in Sharjah, Sammons has at most three days left in charge, and Zimbabwe will be trying to give him a win to remember.