They will try stopping the clocks between overs in men’s one-day and T20 internationals, the International Cricket Council said on Tuesday. The goal is to make the game go faster.
The change, which was accepted by the ICC board at a meeting in Ahmedabad, India, will be tested from December to April.
If the bowling team isn’t ready to bowl the next over within 60 seconds of the end of the last over, they will lose five runs. This will happen three times in a game.
The ICC said in a release, “The clock will be used to fix the amount of time that goes by between overs.”
In limited-over cricket, slow over rates have always been a problem. To fix this, the ICC added fines for both men’s and women’s cricket last year.
At the moment, the defensive team loses one player from outside the 30-yard circle if they don’t start the last over by the time limit.
This is on top of the fines teams have to pay for being too slow.
In tennis and other sports, stop clocks are used to try to speed up games.
Angelo Mathews of Sri Lanka was the first batter to be “timed out” in an international match during the just-ended World Cup. This made the problem of speeding up play in cricket a big deal.
During Sri Lanka’s group match against Bangladesh, Mathews was out because he didn’t take hit within the two-minute time limit.
Mathews tried to say that his helmet strap was giving him trouble, but the judges had to stick to their decision because Bangladesh did not drop their appeal.