In the recent match between Sri Lanka and England in the World T20 tournament, Sri Lanka employed a clever tactic to avoid the possibility of their captain Mahela Jayawardene getting a one-match suspension for slow over rate. Sri Lanka had been earlier fined for slow over rate in their match against West Indies, and under the current rules Jayawardene would have been suspended for a match in the middle of their World T20 campaign if the offense was repeated. Instead of Jayawardene captaining the team in the Super Eight match against England, Kumar Sangakkara was anointed the captain of the Sri Lankan for just one match. However, Jayawardene was in total control on the field when Sri Lanka were fielding, and this attracted criticisms from many Cricket fans and commentators for what they saw as a “breach of the spirit of Cricket”. In the end, it did not really matter as Sri Lanka defeated England easily and bowled their overs within the stipulated time.
However, the tactic employed by Sri Lanka does bring into question the effectiveness of the punishment handed out by the match referees for slow over rate. Clearly this incident sets the wrong precedent, as nothing stops other teams from using the same tactic to avoid the one match suspension of the captain, especially in the middle of an important tournament as World T20. It is important that the teams are penalized for slow over rate, because delayed completion of innings are not desirable both from a commercial as well as a fan experience point of view.
Earlier, ICC had a different way of penalizing the teams for slow over rates. If the team bowling first was guilty of slow over rate, then during their chase that team was docked overs equal to those bowled by the team above the stipulated time of the first innings. However, if the team bowling second was found guilty of the same offense, they were merely fined. Clearly, this was an unfair rule because for a team bowling second, the penalty for the offense was apparently less severe than when bowling first, and so had less incentive to complete their overs within the stipulated time when bowling second. Also, the slow over rate was becoming a chronic problem in the One-Day format, and therefore ICC decided to completely overhaul the punishments for this offense. Now, for the first offense, the teams are docked 10% of their match fee whereas the captains are docked twice that amount. And if the offense is repeated within a year time frame, the captain of the team is suspended for one match.
Instead of having a fair and effective punishment for slow over rate, the ICC stipulated a fairly extreme punishment, especially for the team captain, who always has a sword hanging above his hand once his team has committed the offense. Moreover, recent events show that this punishment can be easily subverted. The punishment that ICC has set is almost like convicting a person for robbery, when all he did was to steal an apple, and even then the thief can escape the punishment by concocting an alibi. It seems the rules are not working the way they were supposed to work.
Instead of punishing the teams by threatening to suspend the captain for a match, here is how the rules can be changed to penalize the teams directly for slow over rate. If a team commits the offense in a match, then in their next match, the total overs available in the inning the team bats in is docked by a number equal to the number of overs bowled above the stipulated time in the previous match. This is in addition to the fines the offending team and its captain have to pay. Essentially, this rule is same as the one that was in place before the current rule, except that the team is penalized in the next match instead of the current match (just as under the present rules, the captain is suspended for the next match after a second offense).
This punishment is more fair than the previous ones, because
- It penalizes the offending team precisely for the very offense they have committed (i.e. docking overs for not bowling all the overs withing the stipulated time).
- It avoids the asymmetric nature of the punishment that was in existence before the current rule was put in place.
- Unlike the present punishment which can be easily subverted by having a dummy captain for just one match, the proposed punishment cannot be subverted.
An interesting situation under this rule can arise if both the teams playing a match were offenders in their respective previously played match. In fact, had this rule been in place, this situation would have come up in the Sri Lanka vs England match, because both the teams had been penalized for slow over rate in their previous match. Clearly, the rule would make little sense if both the teams were docked an equal number of overs. In that case, the team that violated the rule first (in this case, England) would have the overs reduced in their batting innings in this match, whereas the other team will have the number of overs during their batting innings intact. The other team (in this case, Sri Lanka), would instead bat for fewer overs in their next match.