England against Australia may be the series that everyone is waiting on this summer – but before the Ashes, there’s a World Test Championship at stake. The winners will lift one of modern sport’s most iconic and distinctive pieces of silverware.
The ICC World Test Championship (WTC), is the culmination of a two-year marathon, involving 69 matches over 27 series played from Melbourne to Mumbai and London to Chittagong.
Australia and India eventually qualified for the final having finished in the top two of the WTC League Table, averaging comfortably more points than their two nearest challengers, South Africa and England.
This is just the second edition of a tournament that was first due to be played in 2013. Now, a decade on from that cancellation, the WTC has assumed ever-greater significance.
New Zealand were the winners of the inaugural competition, beating India at Southampton in June 2021. The pictures of the Black Caps being presented with the Test World Championship Mace became one of the defining images of that year.
As was their Instagram post of the Mace having its own seat on the flight back from London to Auckland. That post, which ran alongside the captain ‘safely onboard’ racked up nearly 211,000 likes on the social media platform.
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Having arrived in New Zealand, the Mace, which was designed as far back as 2000, and lovingly hand-crafted in Thomas Lyte’s London workshop, then embarked on a country-wide tour.
Shane Jurgenson, New Zealand’s former bowling coach, saw the impact that the Mace had on those who came in huge numbers to celebrate the country’s triumph.
“We had the Mace tour, involving a few players and backroom staff, and going from the top of the North Island to Invercargill in the deep south,” he says. “The amount of people that came along just blew our minds.
“We thought, ‘a Mace tour? Who’s going to come?! Then it started and we had a few thousand people at every event. It was incredible. We were in the Hamilton Mall and they were queuing outside of the Mall, people were out on the street! Just amazing.
“We were in Auckland and the people just kept coming. It was truly humbling.”
It’s an indication, not just of the enduring esteem that the inaugural World Test Champions were held in, but also the pull of one of world sport’s most unusual and striking trophies.
The trophy itself effortlessly combines the best of modern and age-old techniques. The handle of the mace resembles a cricket stump. It’s adorned by a laurel leaf – a traditional symbol of success and achievement – which spirals up its shaft. Using the very latest in 3D technology, the ribbon was printed from a digital design before being cast and gold-plated.
The head of the Mace, meanwhile, features a gold-plated cricket ball, which nestles alongside a global map – depicting the reach of a sport played in all four corners of the planet.
The focus this week, though, will be squarely on the Oval as Australia and India prepare to meet in a match that will draw both huge crowds in South London and also an enormous television audience around the world.
At a time when there is so much talk over the game’s longest and most traditional format, it promises to be a magnificent showcase of cricket’s ultimate Test.
For the Mace, it could also be the first leg of another epic journey that started in our workshops.
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