The International Cricket Council (ICC) has recently announced the new stop clock rule for men’s ODI and T20Is. This rule is devised to speed up the game, and it will come into effect from June 1 in matches of men’s ODI and T20I among Full Members. The ICC confirmed this following their previous board meeting in Dubai.
This rule was tried between December 2023 and April 2024 in men’s ODIs and T20Is, and now it will become a norm as it has been made permanent.
What is ICC’s Stop Clock Rule?
In this rule, the fielding side must be ready to start the next over within a minute of the previous over ending. If the bowling team fails to do so, they will be allowed two warnings by the umpires, after which a five-run penalty will be imposed for the third warning and every subsequent one.
“The results of the stop-clock trial were presented to the Chief Executives’ Committee (CEC), which demonstrated that around 20 minutes per ODI match had been saved in time,” an ICC said in its statement.
This rule certainly did force captains and bowlers to hurry up. During the trial period, no team was found to have exceeded the one-minute limit between overs thrice in a game, and thus no team has yet been given the five-run penalty for this offence.
Chairman of the board of directors of the ICC
Apart from this five-run penalty, the previous two penalties will continue in regard to slow over rates – in-game penalty of putting an extra fielder inside the circle, and fines.
The fielding penalty rule says that if the bowling side fails to begin the final over of the innings by the stipulated cut-off time, they will be told to bring an extra fielder into the 30-yard circle for the remainder of the innings. This means that the fielding team can field only four fielders outside the circle, instead of five, if they are late to start the last over of the innings. This rule, announced in 2022, is for both men’s and women’s white-ball matches.
The match fee fine is that 5% fine for every over the team falls short of. The fine for the captain is double that of his teammates.
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