The International Cricket Council (ICC) has introduced a penalty system for bowling overs late. The bowling team will be given 60 seconds between overs and the batting side will have an addition of five runs to the total if such a delay happens thrice in an innings.
This decision was made by the ICC during their meeting on November 21, 2023, in Ahmedabad. The ICC agreed to implement a trial "stop clock" in men’s ODI and T20I cricket from December 2023 to April 2024. This aims to regulate the time taken between overs.
If the bowling team is not ready to bowl the next over within 60 seconds of the previous over being completed, a five-run penalty will be imposed the third time it happens in an innings. The clock will be used to regulate the amount of time taken between overs.
The ICC also announced that the board has accepted revisions to the pitch and outfield monitoring standards, including a streamlining of the criteria used to evaluate a pitch. In addition, the bar for removing a venue's international designation will be raised from five to six demerit points during five years.
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Following a nine-month engagement process with stakeholders in the sport, the ICC Board also approved new gender eligibility requirements for the international game.
"The new policy is based on the following principles (in order of priority), protection of the integrity of the women's game, safety, fairness, and inclusion, and this means any male-female participants who have been through any form of male puberty will not be eligible to participate in the international women's game regardless of any surgery or gender reassignment treatment they may have undertaken," the ICC said.
The evaluation, sponsored by the ICC Medical Advisory Committee chaired by Dr Peter Harcourt, focuses entirely on gender eligibility for international women's cricket, while gender eligibility at the domestic level is determined by each Member Board and may be influenced by local legislation. Within two years, the regulations will be reconsidered.
ICC Chief Executive Geoff Allardice said: "The changes to the gender eligibility regulations resulted from an extensive consultation process and are founded in science and aligned with the core principles developed during the review. Inclusivity is incredibly important to us as a sport, but our priority was to protect the integrity of the international women's game and the safety of players."
The CEC endorsed a plan to accelerate the development of female match officials which includes equalizing match day pay for ICC umpires across men's and women's cricket and ensuring there is one neutral umpire in every ICC Women's Championship series from January 2024.
(ICC inputs)
