The far-reaching changes in the way the game will be played — if the recommendations of the International Cricket Council’s chief executives’ committee are accepted at the ongoing executive board meeting in Hong Kong — mark the next step in the evolution of the sport in tune with changing times. Several of the alterations mooted relate to 50-over cricket and are aimed at shaking the game out of the rut it seems to have fallen into. Others simply accept that cricket is no longer the gentlemen’s game that it was once believed to be.
In essence, what the ICC’s cricket committee has put forward is the sum of amendments noticed in the way the ODI format needed to be tweaked. The use of new balls from either end in a 50-over game will do away with the need to change the ball after 34 overs as is now mandatory. The compulsory use of the power play overs between the 16th and 40th seeks to break the boring pattern which ODIs had settled into. Harsher punishments for captains in cases of slack over rates seek to ensure that matches do not meander as they tend to do now with endless adjustments in the field setting and whatnot.
Most interesting, though, is the acceptance/capitulation of the ICC to Indian demands over the Umpire Decision Review System. The Indian cricket board has for the past two years held out against accepting the existing ball-tracking technology that the Indians first fell foul of on their 2009 tour of Sri Lanka, and had steadfastly opposed in all bilateral series thereafter. The ICC has now agreed to do away with the Hawk-Eye programme in leg before wicket decisions that would follow the line of the ball till the point it struck a batsman’s pads, and thereafter predict its likely path. With the referral system now confined to infra-red technology (Hot-Spot) and enhanced or “clean” audio from stump mikes (Snicko-Meter), it will eliminate the possibility of challenging LBW decisions based on where the ball pitched simply because the third or TV umpire will no longer have access to the dark wicket-to-wicket strip overlaid on a virtual pitch when such calls were being made. In doing so, the Indians have achieved victory of sorts for all the other member nations of the ICC had no problems with the admittedly flawed system currently in use. Having been at the receiving end once, the Boys in Blue were chary of being singed again in a hurry, and found the ideal argument to buttress their opposition in that the technology had to be foolproof. On that ground, this issue — which was threatening to snowball into a major one on India’s coming tour of England — can be looked at as a victory for both the ICC as well as the BCCI. With India appearing to be something of a bully in the matter, it could well have ended up vitiating the atmosphere during this summer series for some of the English side had already begun to air snide comments about India running scared of umpire reviews. That hopefully will now stop.
Most of all, though, purists will rue the passing away of the “runner” wherein the fielding captain — if so inclined — would graciously agree to a request that a settled batsman had injured himself sufficiently enough to require a substitute to scamper between the wickets even as he went about the business of piling up yet more runs. For now, this will be restricted to international cricket, so all is not lost!