Over-rates yawn

[Prince EWS]

I find the ritual "drinks break" infuriating and often unnecessary. Why?

- fielders can waltz on and off the field and can quite easily go to the boundary if they want a drink
- umpires could easily have thermos' for batsmen and bowlers
- if you have a drinks break on the hour then the batsmen may have both been in the whole hour or for a few minutes

don't think it is the big factor in slowing the rates down, I'd clamp down on/limit fielding changes, perhaps even have a timer once a ball is dead (or the aussies call it dead, whichever) in which the bowler has to have started his run up and certainly reduce the "DRS review" count which, if meant for eliminating clangers, should not take 10-15 seconds to decide and certainly shouldn't involve batsmen discussions (or fielders)


my fix for it has long been to penalise slow over-rates in game by allowing the batsmen to choose the bowlers when a side is behind on the over-rate. no arbitrary run penalties, means you might see a few runs and no fielding side would want to lose the tactical advantage by having their keeper bowling and smeared for 10-15 runs an over whilst the over-rate is caught up.


made me angry when hearing TMS commentary team talking about 26 (?) overs on the 1st morning of the Ashes as if it was a rate to be proud of.

umpires could also tell them to get on with it, if batsmen time waste then warn them and then have a mode of dismissal "out time wasting" and do similar for fielders/bowlers so those not getting a move on get warned/yellow carded and then sent off the field of play for that innings - what captain would want to field with 10 men, or 9, or.....

Giving batsmen a massive incentive to decrease the over-rate by wasting time themselves is never going to be a good solution.

 

[Cricnerd]

Ths year MLB started introducing pitch clocks to shorten the length of the game and it's been pretty well liked by everyone. Dunno how you could apply that in cricket though, it would work better in one dayers.

Start it in one dayers. I'm pretty sure, we'd get use to it quickly, then it'll just a matter of time before we see it in test cricket