This happened after the Chief Executive Committee sanctioned the recommendation made by Men’s Cricket Committee led by Sourav Ganguly. These changes will be operational from October 1 and also in the upcoming T20 World Cup in Australia.
These changes were made to the playing rules in MCC’s updated third edition of the 2017 Code of the Laws of Cricket. These recommendations were also shared with the Women’s Cricket Committee, which supported the recommendations as well.
List of Changes in ICC cricket
1. Batters Retuning When Caught: if a batter is out caught, then the new batter will the position of the striker. Earlier what used to happen was that if the batter has already changed position and has moved to the non-striker end, then the new batter was allowed to take the non-striker end.
2. No Use of Saliva: From now onwards, no one is allowed to use saliva to polish or shine the ball. Keeping in view the Covid-19 pandemic, the ban on saliva on the ball came into force, but now its nature has been converted to a permanent one. Using sweat to do the same is, however, not banned.
3. Reducing time to get ready to take strike: The amount of time a batter can take to get ready to take strike has now been reduced to 2 minutes. Earlier this time used to be 3min for ODIs and Test Cricket. But in the T20s, there is no change in the timings which is 90 seconds.
4. No Ball and Dead Ball – if a batter goes beyond the pitch to hit a ball, then that ball will be called a dead ball. Some part of the batter or the bat should be on the pitch while hitting the ball. Any ball bowled by the bowler which forces the batter to go beyond the pitch will also be called a no-ball.
5. Unfair or Deliberate movement in the field: ICC’s new rules say that any deliberate or unfair movement in the field while the bowler is running to bowl, can get the bowling team into trouble. Five penalty runs will be given to the batting side as well as a call of the dead ball.
6.   Running out of a non-striker: earlier running out a non-striker was under the section of unfair play but now it has been moved to the regular run-out section.
7. Bowler throwing the ball at the striker’s end before delivery: The practice of a bowler who saw the batter advancing down the wicket, throwing a ball at the striker’s end in an attempt to run out the batter will now be considered a dead ball.
8. In match-penalty- If the bowling side fails to bowl their overs in a scheduled time, then the additional fielder will be brought inside the fielding circle for the rest of the innings. this will now also be adopted for the ODIs as well.
There is a ray of hope that these new rules will make cricket even fairer and the team should have equal opportunities to showcase their strength.
