Mark Cavendish has complained recently that few decisions seem to go his way, but it has emerged that, without knowing it, he has had an influence on the decision to change the way the Tour de France's green points jersey is decided. According to the organisers, this year's radical alterations have been made because the Manxman's near-misses in the award for the past two years highlighted the fact that the jersey did not necessarily reward the fastest sprinter.

From this July the Tour's green jersey will be decided on the daily stage placings, as before, but also through the placings at one heavily rewarded intermediate sprint. Hitherto there were three intermediate sprints, carrying a handful of points.

"I first realised there was an issue when I realised that we had a sprinter like Mark Cavendish and he hadn't won the green jersey in three Tours," the Tour's organiser, Christian Prudhomme, told the Guardian. "If Cavendish were to end his career tomorrow – which I obviously don't think will happen – you would say: 'Wow, he won 15 stages in three years but never won the green jersey.'"

It is, said Prudhomme, one of a range of measures the Tour has taken to open up the racing in the first week of the event. The change is expected to alter radically the way that teams approach the flat stages in the Tour, and no one quite knows what to expect. Cavendish and his team have, thus far, said merely that they will see what happens on the road.

"It's not that I am biased towards Cavendish, but it wasn't logical [as it was]," Prudhomme said. "Winning 15 stages in three years is something no other sprinter has ever done. If you have a sprinter who can do that it's not normal that he can't win the green jersey. So we decided to change things." According to Prudhomme the rejig was the main topic of conversation over the winter whenever team managers visited the Tour de France organisers, Amaury Sport Organisation.

Cavendish did not finish the 2008 Tour, when he won four stages, but in 2009 and 2010 he was clearly the fastest sprinter, taking six and five stages in those Tours. Despite his obvious superiority, he finished a close second in the green jersey on each occasion: 270 points to Thor Hushovd's 280 in 2009 and 232 points to Alessandro Petacchi's 243 in 2010.