The International Cricket Council (ICC) revealed a new set of rules in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic that will be interim in nature and it will be prevalent for some time in the International cricket. However, the five new rules that amended by the ICC will mostly be applicable to the longer format of the cricket.
The new rules will come into effect from series starting September 28th or later. The series will come into effect from the two upcoming Test series as South Africa will host Bangladesh and Pakistan take on Sri Lanka in the United Arab Emirates.
The five rules introduced by the ICC in yesterday’s meeting are as follows:
- Send-offs: Under the new rules, players involved in on-off field scuffles can now be sent off umpires. It will be done on Level 4 offence only “Threatening to assault an umpire, making inappropriate and deliberate physical contact with an umpire, physically assaulting a player or any other person and committing any other act of violence all constitute Level 4 offences,” the ICC said.
- Bat Dimensions: To maintain a healthy competition between bat and ball, as ICC has decided to restrict the thickness of the bats “The restriction on the length and width of bats remain unchanged but the thickness of the edges can’t be more than 40mm and the overall depth can be 67 mm at the most. Umpires will be issued with a new bat gauge, which they can use to check a bat’s legality,” it stated.
- DRS: In a major boost for the captains, they will not lose the DRS in case a decision remains unchanged, solely as the result of an “Umpires calf” “As for DRS in Test matches, there will be no more top-up reviews after 80 overs of an innings, meaning that there can only be two unsuccessful reviews in each innings, while the DRS will now also be allowed to be used in T20Is,” ICC said.
- Run-outs will be tough: It will be no more difficult for the fielders to run out a batsman and ICC explained about these rules in detail “An important change concerning runouts is that if a batsman is running or diving towards the crease with forwarding momentum, and has grounded his/her bat behind the popping crease but subsequently lost contact with the ground at the time of the wickets being put down, the batsman will not be run out,”.
- Helmet bounce: Unlike before, the batsman can still be caught, stumped or run out even if the ball bounces off the helmet worn by a fielder by a fielder or wicket-keeper.
