ICC Cricket Rule Changes: An Analysis - Part I

With the ICC executive meeting in Hong Kong being as closely followed as a Sachin Tendulkar century, it was only appropriate that they come out with some interesting rule changes in the game of cricket.

Here is a gist of what transpired at the Hong Kong meeting apart from the DRS issue that was resolved by a compromise formula.

There will be no runners allowed in international cricket...

...and thankfully at that. It was a strange rule to me. If you could have someone else run for you, why not have someone bat or bowl for you as well. To allow runners was akin to undermine running between the wickets as a huge factor comprising of the art of batting. It was high time that they let go of the archaic rule.

The batsmen had begun to take advantage of the rule and there were instances of some using runners from very early in the innings after suffering from cramps and batting through the innings. Saeed Anwar's then-world record innings 194 against India in the late 1990s had seen most of the runs come while batting with a runner.

Good riddance, I would say.

New balls will be used from both ends in ODIs:

Earlier, there was only one new ball that was used till the 34th over before the ball was changed but the changed ball wasn’t really a new one. It was just a better coloured ball to enable sighting better. Two ways of looking at this change to me. It helps the bowlers, especially the pace bowlers much more – making even the first change bowler have a harder ball to bowl with.

But what it also does is to delay the onset of the reverse-swing and the bringing on of the slower bowlers, who prefer the ball to have become old before they come on. While recent times have seen spin bowlers being bowled with the new ball a lot more than in the past, the reverse-swing issue could be a cause for much concern for bowlers like Zaheer Khan and Lasith Malinga, who are much better with the older ball than with the new cherry.

Batting and bowling Powerplays to be taken between overs 16 and 40

This change has been brought about to overcome the one big issue that has been haunting the existence of the ODI format of the game – a potentially monotonous middle period between overs 15 and 40, when the two sides are usually more interested in milking the bowling around. This makes for predictable viewing and in the day and age of T20I cricket, it was probably, the one big factor that could have put a nail in the ODI’s coffin.

One has often got the feeling that the Batting and Bowling Powerplays have not been exploited enough as a part of tactics, by the captains around the world and this change could force the captains to think a tad more out of the box.

Continued in the second part here...