{"id":913229,"date":"2026-10-02T08:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T08:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/913229\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T08:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T08:10:13","slug":"five-run-penalty-for-time-wasting-among-icc-rule-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/913229\/","title":{"rendered":"Five-run penalty for time-wasting among ICC rule changes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"w-article__summary\">The ICC have confirmed a range of rule changes across all formats from October 1<\/p>\n<p>Batters can now be handed a five-run penalty if found to be wasting time on three or more occasions, following a series of changes to the ICC&#8217;s playing conditions.<\/p>\n<p>The changes, which came into place on October 1, also include stricter regulations around the size of the ball in the women&#8217;s game, and previously flagged changes around the use of pink balls in Tests and wickets falling in the final over of the day in multi-day matches.<\/p>\n<p>While an incoming batter can be dismissed &#8220;timed out&#8221; for taking too \u200blong to face their first delivery, there \u200bis no fixed limit to how much time \u2060a batter can take between deliveries.<\/p>\n<p>But in general, \u200ba batter is expected to be prepared for a \u200bdelivery as soon as the fielding team and the bowler are ready.<\/p>\n<p>Following the ICC&#8217;s changes, batters found to be wasting time on three or more occasions within an innings, or an 80-over block in Tests, are liable to lose five runs for their team.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If a batter is not ready to face the ball \u200bwithin the prescribed time, a warning will be \u200bissued for the first offence, a final warning for the \u200csecond, \u2060and five penalty runs awarded to the fielding side for the third and each subsequent offence,&#8221; the ICC said in a statement on Thursday. The warnings \u200bare reset at \u200bthe end \u2060of the innings or after 80 overs.<\/p>\n<p>The ICC also announced tighter regulations for \u200bthe size and weight of the balls, \u200bintroducing strict specifications for women&#8217;s balls for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For women\u2019s and junior cricket, manufacturers have often produced a single ball for both categories,&#8221; the ICC statement said.\u00a0&#8220;New limits have now been introduced, establishing three distinct size and weight specifications for men\u2019s, women\u2019s and junior cricket.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Another change includes providing umpires with &#8220;greater leeway in determining whether a ball is finally settled, which can often be extremely important, particularly on the final ball of a close game. The ball no longer must necessarily be in the bowler\u2019s or wicketkeeper\u2019s hands to be finally settled.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the ICC also clarified that for a ball to be considered held by a fielder for a run-out or stumping, the fielder must have complete control of the ball. Merely touching the ball with the hand while it breaks the stumps is not sufficient.<\/p>\n<p>The governing body has also allowed pink balls, which are \u2060used \u200bin day-night tests, to be \u200btrialled in daytime tests by mutual agreement\u00a0between the teams before the \u200bmatch, to reduce loss of play due to bad light.<\/p>\n<p>The decision cannot be changed after the match has started. Switching from red to pink ball is also not allowed once the match has commenced.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ICC have confirmed a range of rule changes across all formats from October 1 Batters can now&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":913230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85,83],"class_list":["post-913229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}