Every Match Counts: Is this the Future of Bilateral Cricket?
India Women's Tour of Australia.
When Indian women landed in Australia in February 2026, they arrived as reigning ODI World Cup champions, having stunned the hosts in a dramatic semi-final just months earlier. This tour is also historic in structure: it is the first time since 2021 that India and Australia are contesting a full multi-format series on Australian soil, and it is built around a points-based system designed so that every single match, in every format, genuinely counts.
The Multi-Format Points System: How It Works
The series uses a framework borrowed directly from the Women’s Ashes, the pioneer of the multi-format, points-based contest. The teams play three T20 Internationals, three One Day Internationals, and a one-off Test match. In this system, T20Is and ODIs each carry 2 points for a win, 0 for a loss, and 1 point per side for a tie or no-result, while the Test is worth 4 points for a win, 2 points each in the event of a draw, and 0 for a loss.
With three T20Is and three ODIs, there are 6 points available from each white-ball format and 4 from the Test, making 16 points in total, with the overall series decided by the cumulative tally across formats. Crucially, no match exists in isolation, and every result feeds into a single overarching scoreboard that keeps the series alive until the final ball of the final match.
The Origins
The idea of a multi-format points system in women’s cricket dates back to the 2013 Women’s Ashes in England. Until then, the Ashes were decided exclusively by Test results, a tradition stretching back to the inaugural women’s Test series in 1934–35. As limited-overs cricket grew in prominence and scheduling became more congested, relying on a single Test as the ultimate decider for an entire tour began to feel increasingly out of step with the modern game.
The 2013 Women’s Ashes introduced a new model: six points for a Test win, two points apiece for a drawn Test, and two points for each limited-overs win. England dominated that Ashes, winning 12–4 overall. The 2013–14 return series in Australia was far closer, with England edging a 10–8 victory that showcased how the system could keep a series alive even when one side appeared to have the upper hand in a particular format.
In 2015, the Test allocation was revised downward from six to four points, a change Australia’s then coach Matthew Mott praised as creating a fairer balance between the formats. The now-standard structure - 4 points for a Test win, 2 for a draw, and 2 for each limited-overs win, has remained in place ever since.
Beyond the Ashes, the system was used for the first time in non-Ashes women’s cricket in 2021, when India toured England and lost a closely fought series 10–6 on points. Later that year, Australia hosted India in another multi-format contest, winning 11–5 after taking the ODI series 2–1, the T20I series 2–0, and drawing the lone Test. That 2021 Australian home series is the most direct predecessor to the current 2025–26 tour.
Interestingly, when Australia toured India in 2023–24, each format was treated as a separate bilateral series with no unified points table. In hindsight, that decision stripped the tour of the narrative tension that the integrated system naturally generates, reducing the sense of one continuous storyline stretching from the first ball of the first T20I to the last session of the Test.
Men’s cricket has dabbled with this concept too. In 2016, England hosted Sri Lanka and Pakistan in experimental multi-format series using a combined points table, but the idea was never given a sustained run and has since disappeared from the men’s calendar.
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The 2025-26 Australia Tour
The ongoing tour has been a near-perfect advertisement for what a multi-format points system can produce: dramatic momentum swings, format-specific dominance, and the constant possibility of a comeback.
In the T20I leg, India claimed a landmark 2–1 series win, their first T20I series triumph in Australia since 2016. It was Australia’s first bilateral T20I series defeat at home since 2017 and a milestone moment for Indian women’s cricket, giving India a 4-2 points lead after the T20Is.
Australia answered in ruthless fashion in the ODIs. They were hit by injuries - Ellyse Perry and Kim Garth were ruled out with quad strains before the series began, and Sophie Molineux later suffered a back issue, which severely tested their depth. Yet they showed why they have long been the standard-bearers in women’s cricket. In the first ODI, Alyssa Healy’s composed half-century anchored a comprehensive Australian win, leveling the overall points at 4–4.
Australia then took the second ODI at Allan Border Field, with Georgia Voll and Phoebe Litchfield stitching together a fluent 119-run partnership that put India on the back foot. India might have banked the T20I trophy, but Australia powered their way back with a comprehensive 3-0 ODI series win, taking the points tally to 8-4. India still has a chance to level the scores, with the one-off Test yet to be played.
Why the Multi-Format Points System Is a Brilliant Concept
Bilateral cricket’s greatest structural flaw is the dead rubber. In a conventional three-match series, once a team leads 2–0, the third game is effectively meaningless: teams rest key players, crowds thin out, and the competitive intensity fades. A unified points table all but eliminates this problem.
Under the multi-format system, a team that dominates the T20Is cannot afford to treat the ODIs as a chance to experiment too freely, because the overall series is still very much alive. Conversely, a side trailing heavily heading into the Test knows there is still a realistic route to an overall series win, because a four-point Test victory can dramatically alter the standings. Every match carries stakes; every result, even late in a tour, meaningfully shifts the narrative.
There is also a deeper philosophical value at play here. The system honors all three formats equally within the structure of a single narrative. It does not privilege T20Is simply because they generate more immediate commercial revenue, nor does it diminish the Test match as an anachronism.
Instead, the four points available in the Test - double that of any single limited-overs match - acknowledge the primacy and difficulty of the longest format while still keeping it in conversation with its shorter counterparts. The Test is the series finale, the crescendo, the match with the highest stakes.
It is not about choosing one format over another, but about binding them into a single, coherent journey.
The Case for Multi-Format Series in Men’s Cricket
Men's bilateral series are increasingly plagued by relevance fatigue. When Australia visit England for a five-Test Ashes, the narrative largely sustains itself, but when a major team tours a smaller nation for a three-Test series, interest can evaporate once the result is sealed early. There is no context or
A multi-format points structure could transform the very idea of a men’s bilateral tour. If points from Test matches, ODIs, and T20Is all fed into a single series table, every format would carry visible, shared stakes. Teams would need to select genuinely well-rounded squads and think more carefully about workload management. Versatile players capable of contributing across formats would be more valuable than ever, reanimating the idea of the complete touring team.
The 2016 experiment in England, when men’s multi-format points series were trialed against Sri Lanka and Pakistan, was too limited in scope and duration to be a fair test of the model’s long-term appeal. A concept of this nature needs structural commitment to align with players, broadcasters, and audiences. Men’s cricket has an opportunity to learn from a system that women’s cricket has been refining, stress-testing, and proving since 2013.
If this India–Australia tour demonstrates anything, it is that when every match feeds into a single, shared goal, bilateral cricket stops feeling like a series of disconnected obligations and starts to resemble what it should have been all along: one continuous, compelling story.
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