ICC Test mace: The complete list of winners

South Africa hold the ICC Test mace. They won it at Lord’s on 14 June 2025, beating Australia by five wickets in the World Test Championship final, and it stays with them until the next final is played at The Oval in June 2027.

That single line is where most versions of this list have gone wrong. Plenty of them stop at Australia’s win in 2023. A fair few stop at India in 2019 — because the mace quietly changed jobs that year, and the pages built on the old system never caught up. Below is the complete list of winners from 2003 to now, the two very different competitions that produced it, and why the side ranked No.1 in Test cricket today is not the side holding the trophy.

ICC Test mace winners: the complete list

Year	Winner	How it was won
April 2003	Australia	Top of the Test rankings
April 2004	Australia	Top of the Test rankings
April 2005	Australia	Top of the Test rankings
April 2006	Australia	Top of the Test rankings
April 2007	Australia	Top of the Test rankings
April 2008	Australia	Top of the Test rankings
April 2009	Australia	Top of the Test rankings
April 2010	India	Top of the Test rankings
April 2011	India	Top of the Test rankings
April 2012	England	Top of the Test rankings
April 2013	South Africa	Top of the Test rankings
April 2014	South Africa	Top of the Test rankings
April 2015	South Africa	Top of the Test rankings
April 2016	Australia	Top of the Test rankings
April 2017	India	Top of the Test rankings
April 2018	India	Top of the Test rankings
April 2019	India	Top of the Test rankings
June 2021	New Zealand	World Test Championship final
June 2023	Australia	World Test Championship final
June 2025	South Africa	World Test Championship final

There is no entry for 2020, and that gap is not an oversight. India’s April 2019 award was the last one decided on rankings; the first World Test Championship was already under way by then and did not finish until June 2021, so nobody was handed the mace in between.

What the ICC Test mace actually is

The mace is the trophy for being the best Test side in the world. What has changed is how you prove it, and it has changed once.

From 2003 to 2019 the mace was a ranking prize. The ICC ran a rolling ratings table for Test teams, took a snapshot on 1 April each year, and handed the trophy plus a cash prize to whoever was sitting top on that date. There was no final and no knockout. Hold the No.1 spot on the cut-off day and the mace was yours for the next twelve months, and it could change hands mid-year too if a series shuffled the ratings.

From 2019 it became a tournament prize. The World Test Championship gathered the Test nations into a two-year league, with the top two meeting in a one-off final, and the mace now goes to whoever wins that match. If the scoring and the draw rules are new to you, our guide to how Test cricket works covers the basics. The ratings table still exists and the ICC still publishes it. It just no longer decides who gets the trophy.

The mace and the No.1 ranking are now two different things

Under the old system that heading would have been nonsense. The mace was the ranking — same table, same team, one object. Since 2019 the two can point at different sides, and right now they do.

Measure	Leader	Detail
ICC Test mace	South Africa	Won the WTC final at Lord’s, June 2025
ICC Test team rankings	Australia	131 rating points (rankings of 7 July 2026)
Current WTC standings	Australia	87.5% of points won (28 July 2026)

Australia are top of the rankings on 131, ahead of South Africa on 119 and New Zealand on 106. Australia are also running away with the current championship cycle. And they do not have the mace, because South Africa beat them in the final of the last one. Both things are true at once, and only one of them is the trophy.

So if a page tells you the mace belongs to whoever is ranked first in Tests, it is describing a system the ICC retired seven years ago.

The three World Test Championship finals

Cycle	Dates	Venue	Result
2019-21	18-23 June 2021	Rose Bowl, Southampton	New Zealand beat India by 8 wickets
2021-23	7-11 June 2023	The Oval, London	Australia beat India by 209 runs
2023-25	11-14 June 2025	Lord’s, London	South Africa beat Australia by 5 wickets

Kyle Jamieson took the player-of-the-match award in 2021 with seven wickets, Travis Head’s 163 won it in 2023, and Aiden Markram’s 136 in the fourth innings won it in 2025 — with Kagiso Rabada taking nine wickets across the match.

Three finals, three different winners: nobody has won the World Test Championship twice. India and Australia have each played in two of them. Australia won one and lost one; India lost both, in 2021 and 2023, and have not been back since.

South Africa’s win in 2025 also ended a wait that had nothing to do with Test cricket. It was their first ICC trophy of any kind since the 1998 KnockOut Trophy in Dhaka — a gap of more than 26 years, and the reason the celebrations at Lord’s looked the way they did.

Which teams have won the ICC Test mace

Team	Times	Years
Australia	9	2003-2009, 2016, 2023
India	5	2010, 2011, 2017, 2018, 2019
South Africa	4	2013, 2014, 2015, 2025
England	1	2012
New Zealand	1	2021

Only five teams have ever held it. Australia’s nine is more than anyone else, and seven of those came in one unbroken run from 2003 to 2009 — the tail end of the side that dominated Test cricket either side of the millennium. Their other two are separated by seven years and by a change of format: a ranking award in 2016, then a final in 2023.

Australia and South Africa are the only sides to have won it under both systems. That leaves New Zealand as the one team whose name is on the list purely on the strength of a final — they never topped the rankings on a cut-off date, and in 2021 they did not need to.

How many Test maces does India have?

Five. India first went top in April 2010 under MS Dhoni and held it again in 2011, before losing it to England in April 2012. Virat Kohli‘s side took it back in April 2017 and kept it through 2018 and 2019 — the final three awards of the ranking era.

India have not held the mace since. They reached the first two World Test Championship finals and lost both, and did not qualify for the third, finishing third in the 2023-25 table behind South Africa and Australia.

Who wins the ICC Test mace next?

The 2025-27 World Test Championship is past halfway. These were the standings on 28 July 2026, ordered by percentage of available points won, which is how the WTC table is ranked:

Pos	Team	Played	Won	Lost	Drawn	PCT
1	Australia	8	7	1	0	87.50%
2	South Africa	4	3	1	0	75.00%
3	New Zealand	6	4	1	1	72.22%
4	Bangladesh	4	2	1	1	58.33%
5	India	9	4	4	1	48.15%
6	Sri Lanka	4	1	1	2	41.67%
7	England	13	4	8	1	24.36%
8	West Indies	11	2	7	2	22.73%
9	Pakistan	5	1	4	0	6.66%

Because the table is sorted on percentage rather than raw points, matches played matter as much as matches won. Australia’s 87.5% comes from eight Tests; South Africa are second on 75% having played only four, so a couple of results either way will move them a long distance. England have played 13 — more than anyone — and sit seventh, which is what a heavy schedule does to a side losing more than it wins.

The top two at the end of the cycle meet in the final at The Oval from 9 to 13 June 2027. England hold the hosting rights for the next three finals — 2027, 2029 and 2031 — with the ECB choosing the ground each time. It will be The Oval’s second, after the 2023 final that Australia won there.

Until someone lifts it in south London, the mace stays in South Africa. For a look back at the bowlers who decided the very first cycle, see our list of the leading wicket-takers of the 2019-21 World Test Championship.

Photo credit: AFP / Glyn Kirk