South Africa and Australia are locked in to face off at Lord’s after both ended the WTC cycle in hot form
The third World Test Championship Final will be played at Lord’s in London, beginning June 11, 2023, featuring South Africa for the first time, and reigning champions Australia.
Play is scheduled to begin at 10:30am local time (7:30pm AEST) each day, which is 30 minutes earlier than usual for Test matches in England.
The blockbuster Test match will be broadcast on Prime Video in Australia.
The global streaming giant acquired the rights for all ICC events for the 2024-27 period. The good news is those with an Amazon subscription already have access to Prime’s streaming service. If not, they offer a 30-day free trial that you can sign up to here.
Cricket.com.au and the CA Live app will have you covered for all the breaking news, talking points and form in the lead up to the Test Championship. We’ll also have live scores throughout the match and extensive coverage each day with reports, video recaps, interviews and behind-the-scenes insights from our crew who will be travelling to London for the contest.
You can also catch up on all the latest news via The Unplayable Podcast, where we will be joined by special guests to dissect all the talking points ahead of and during the WTC final. Listen and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts and anywhere else you get your pods!
Both sides revealed their playing XI on match eve in the respective press conferences at Lord’s.
XI: Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Cameron Green, Steve Smith, Travis Head, Beau Webster, Alex Carey (wk), Pat Cummins (c), Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood.
After beating India in a series for the first time in a decade, Australia will head into the Test decider in hot form after whitewashing Sri Lanka in two Tests at the end of January, their first red-ball series triumph in the island nation since 2011.
Marnus Labuschagne will move up the order to open alongside Usman Khawaja, with Cameron Green returning to the side to bat in the crucial No.3 position. Allrounder Beau Webster retains his spot, while Scott Boland is the unlucky omission to make way for gun quick Josh Hazlewood.
XI: Aiden Markram, Ryan Rickelton, Wiaan Mulder, Temba Bavuma (c), Tristan Stubbs, David Bedingham, Kyle Verreynne (wk), Marco Jansen, Kagiso Rabada, Keshav Maharaj, Lungi Ngidi.
South Africa surged to the top of the WTC standings with seven straight victories in Tests against West Indies, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Their qualification for the decider is remarkable given they sent a second-string side to New Zealand in early 2024 due to a schedule clash with their domestic T20 franchise tournament. They lost the series 2-0.
The Proteas have opted for additional firepower with fast bowler Lungi Ngidi returning to the side in place of Dane Paterson.
The idea of it being a neutral venue means the obvious answer is it favours neither team, but Australia have a superior record at Lord’s over the past 10 years.
Australia haven’t lost in their three most recent Tests they’ve played at the Home of Cricket – winning in the 2015 and 2023 Ashes and drawing in 2019 – the latter remembered for Steve Smith being subbed out with concussion and replaced by Marnus Labuschagne after being struck in the head by Jofra Archer.
Smith has played in each of those three Tests and averages 101.80 at Lord’s in that span, with two centuries and a top score of 215 during Australia’s 405-run victory in 2015. He also hit 110 in the first innings of the 2023 second Ashes Test.
Marnus Labuschagne and Travis Head both average in the 40s from their two appearances at Lord’s, while Josh Hazlewood has been the pick of the Aussie bowlers at Lord’s since 2015 with 13 wickets at 26.15, with Pat Cummins also taking 10 at 21.10.
South Africa have also won two of their past three Tests at Lord’s, beating England by an innings and 12 runs in August 2022 and 51 runs in 2012. However, they lost by 211 runs in 2017.
Kagiso Rabada was the chief destroyer with 5-52 and 2-27 during their last visit as they conquered ‘Bazball’ by rolling the hosts twice for under 200. Rabada has 13 wickets at 19.38 in his two matches at Lord’s.
Proteas captain Temba Bavuma’s only match at Lord’s was in 2017 where he hit a half-century and spinner Keshav Maharaj is the next best with the bat of their current players, with 60 runs in his three innings there.
New Zealand’s Chris Gaffaney and England’s Richard Illingworth have been appointed to stand in consecutive WTC finals after the pair also umpired the previous Test decider in 2023.
Illingworth, the current ICC Umpire of the Year, has in fact been named as a standing umpire in all three WTC finals to date having also officiated the inaugural edition in 2021. The duo also stood together in last year’s T20 World Cup final between India and South Africa.
The third umpire will again be Englishman Richard Kettleborough, with India’s Nitin Menon making his WTC final debut as the fourth umpire. Indian match referee Javagal Srinath will oversee the contest.
The Dukes ball will again be used at Lord’s as it was for the two previous World Test Championship finals at Southampton in 2021 and The Oval in 2023. Dukes brand is the ball used by England for Test matches in the country, and features a more pronounced seam and is harder than the Australian-made Kookaburra ball used in both Australia and South Africa. Australian men’s selection chair George Bailey said the Dukes ball, the venue and the opposition would “all be factors” in trying to settle on an XI for the final.
There have been just four draws in the 66 Tests played so far in the current World Test Championship cycle. One of them included both South Africa (1 draw) and Australia (2 draws), with the two teams playing out a rain-affected draw at the SCG in January 2023 to see Australia win the three-Test series 2-0.
If the WTC Final is drawn, tied or abandoned, then South Africa and Australia will be declared joint winners of the World Test Championship.
To try and minimise the possibility of a draw, the ICC has scheduled a reserve day for the final.
Yep, that’s right, this Test match is unique in that it has a scheduled reserve day, on June 16.
It’s partly a hark back to a bygone era of so-called ‘timeless Tests’, but also partly an admission that summer in England can be a fickle beast. That proved the case in 2021 when the inaugural WTC Final used the reserve day after the opening day of the event was a washout.
But, to be clear, the reserve day is there to make up for any lost playing time during the regular schedule of five days, not to keep playing until one side wins.
Australia beat India in the 2023 edition just before lunch on the fifth day in a match that saw little disruption for weather.
If a weather event strikes during the Test, umpires will use their usual measures to make up lost time such as playing later or starting earlier where possible.
The reserve day will only come into use if there is more than one hour of lost playing time to be made up, but it can be up to a full day, if required.
The ICC has confirmed a massive increase in prize money for this year’s World Test Championship final, with the winners to take home a cool US$3.6 million purse. That’s A$5.6 million. It’s a huge jump from the US$1.6m (A$2.59m) the Aussies pocketed for winning the 2023 event.
Whatever the result, the Aussies are taking home more cash this time. The losing finalist of this year’s WTC final will make more than the Aussies did as winners in 2023, with the 2025 runner-up collecting US$2.1m (A$3.27m).
The huge jump in cash “exhibits the ICC’s efforts to prioritise Test cricket”. But it still falls short of the prize money offered in other ICC events. Pat Cummins’ men won US$4m (A$6.15m) for lifting the 2023 ODI World Cup – which was the same amount England won at the 2019 event. For the 2024 T20 World Cup, India pocketed about US$2.6m (A$4m) .
In addition to the cash, the World Test Championship-winning team is presented with the Test Championship Mace. Before the introduction of the WTC, the mace was held by whichever team topped the ICC’s Test rankings, with a US$1m cash prize presented annually every April from 2003 to 2019.
In that period, Australia held the mace from its introduction through to 2009, and won it again temporarily in 2016 under Steve Smith. South Africa held the mace from 2013-15 under Graeme Smith and Hashim Amla’s captaincy.
Australia won four of their six series in the 2023-25 World Test Championship cycle, beating Pakistan (3-0 at home), New Zealand (2-0 away), India (3-1 at home) and Sri Lanka (2-0 away).
They drew the Ashes 2-2 in England in their first series of the new cycle and also with West Indies 1-1 at home as Shamar Joseph’s heroic seven-wicket haul in Brisbane carried the visitors to their first Test win on Australian soil in 27 years.
Australia’s six-wicket win over India in the fifth Test at the SCG in January secured their spot in the WTC Final and eliminated India in the process, and they enter the Test Championship final on a four-match winning streak after beating Sri Lanka 2-0.
South Africa will enter the WTC decider on a seven-Test winning streak having accounted for West Indies (1-0 away), Bangladesh (2-0 away), Sri Lanka (2-0 home) and Pakistan (2-0 home) since August last year.
Prior to that they’d lost three of their first four Tests in the cycle, including both in New Zealand in 2024 where their top players remained at home to play in the SA20 franchise league. Their seven straight victories saw them surge from a points percentage of 25 to first in the WTC standings with 69.44, where they will remain even if Australia win both of their remaining matches in Sri Lanka.
June 11-15: South Africa v Australia, Lord’s
Broadcast exclusively on Prime Video in Australia. Sign up here for a 30-day free trial
Your No.1 destination for live cricket scores, match coverage, breaking news, video highlights and in‑depth feature stories.
