The International Cricket Council in its bid to make T20I cricket its flagship program to get the game of cricket back into the Olympics has brought in a significant change to reduce the time of play. From now onwards, a penalty will be placed on the bowling team if it fails to finish bowling its full quota of overs within a stipulated time period.
As part of the penalty, the bowling team would be allowed only four fielders, instead of five, outside the 30-yard circle for every over they fail to bowl within a specified time limit.
According to the rule, the fielding side needs to "be in a position to bowl the first ball of the final over of the innings by the scheduled [or rescheduled in case of an unavoidable delay] cessation time for the innings".
It will be upon the umpires to keep the players informed about the cut-off time.
This change has been adopted from The Hundred, the England Cricket Board’s 100 ball cricket format in which each side is allowed to play 100 balls and many rules of normal T20 cricket were tweaked to make the running of the game smooth and fan-friendly.
"The change was recommended by the ICC Cricket Committee, which regularly discusses ways to improve the pace of play in all formats, after considering reports on the effectiveness of a similar regulation that was included in the playing conditions for the Hundred competition conducted by the ECB,” ICC was quoted as saying by ESPNCricinfo.
According to the new playing conditions, the teams would now however be allowed optional drinks break midway through each innings in a bilateral T20I series. The timing and duration of the break would be decided by the two boards mutually beforehand.