Different rules for over-rate penalties in different continents — Does Stokes have a point?

As much as England has led a refreshing approach — an aggressive edge — in Test cricket, its skipper Ben Stokes has been on the offensive while addressing off-field issues.

His most recent outburst came against the system that penalises slow over-rate offences.

England was docked two World Test Championship (WTC) points and fined 10 per cent of its match fees by the International Cricket Council (ICC) for maintaining a slow over-rate in the third Test against India at Lord’s.

In the lead up to the fourth Test in Manchester, Stokes urged ‘common sense’ to prevail when handing out over-rate offences.

“You can’t have the same rules in Asia, where spin is bowling 70 per cent of the overs, to have the same laws in New Zealand, Australia, England, where it’s going to be 70 or 80 per cent of seam bowling, because the spinner’s over takes less time than a seamer’s over.

“Common sense would think that you should look at changing how the over-rates are timed in different continents,” Stokes said at the pre-match press conference.

England’s captain Ben Stokes talks about why there should be a change in the way over-rate penalties are determined in different continents.
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PTI

Does Stokes have a point here?

There is significant merit to the English skipper’s contention that over-rate benchmarks and the corresponding penalties should vary according to conditions.

During the 2023-25 WTC cycle, England was docked a whopping 22 points for slow over-rate, and all five of its offences came outside Asia (four at home and one in New Zealand).

But the trend isn’t unique to England.

Of the 12 instances of teams being docked points for slow over-rates during the 2023-25 edition of the WTC, 10 occurred outside Asia and just two in the Indian subcontinent. Nine matches had at least one team penalised for over-rates, and eight were held outside Asia.

By extension, the system disproportionately penalises fast bowlers, who operate for the larger part of a match outside Asia.

In three of the 12 instances, where the fielding team was punished for slow over-rates in the last WTC cycle, the pacers bowled more than 90 per cent of the deliveries during a match.

They bowled more than 80 per cent of the overs on three occasions as well, and four times over 70 per cent. Only twice was their share of deliveries less than 70 per cent during a game.

The lowest share of deliveries bowled by a penalised team’s pacers during a match was 54.41 per cent — Bangladesh was the offender, against Pakistan in Rawalpindi. Both teams were handed penalties in that game — the only occasion of teams being docked points for slow over-rates in Asia in the 2023-25 WTC cycle.

ALSO READ: Uneven series, unequal chances — WTC’s structural problem

It is no mystery that the fast bowlers take significantly longer to complete their overs, and their recovery only gets slower over the course of a long series. With England playing a five-Test series more than any other team, the over-rate penalties may have hurt it inordinately.

“You’ve got fast bowlers bending their backs consistently. Throughout the course of a game, the time of overs is going to come down because you’ve just got tired bodies. We played for five days. That was our 15th day of cricket,” Stokes said.

Jofra Archer, one of England’s best seamers in this series, returned to red-ball action at the international level after four years, following his recovering from injury.
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Reuters

Of the 22 points England was docked during the 2023-25 WTC cycle, 19 came during a gruelling five-Test Ashes series against Australia at home.

Though England fell foul of the minimum required number of overs in the first two Tests, it was docked eight more points over the last two matches of the series. Australia, too, was handed a 10-point reprimand for a slow over-rate in the fourth Test.

An era of changing Test cricket patterns

The Ashes series in 2023 was a case in point for proponents of a new system for penalising slow over-rates. England and Australia were docked a combined 32 WTC points during what was perhaps the most closely fought series ever.

The win margins were wafer-thin: Australia won the first Test by two wickets and the second by 43 runs, before England levelled the series by clinching a three-wicket win in the third Test and a 49-run victory in the fifth.

The fans were anything but ‘robbed’ of gripping action due to overs lost and probably didn’t mind the bowlers taking longer to set their fields and strategise as the contests got closer.

Stuart Broad celebrates winning the fifth Test against Australia at the 2023 Ashes Series. The win helped England draw the series 2-2.
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Getty Images

There is also a view that the ever-increasing run rates in Test cricket — which can lead to the fielding side revisiting its plans frequently and thus take longer to complete overs — can influence over-rates.

Moreover, batting-friendly conditions could also prompt slower over-rates owing to an increase in the number of boundaries and the fielding team taking its time to plot a dismissal and stem the flow of runs.

ALSO READ: Dickie Bird on slow over-rates during IND vs ENG: Umpires should not tolerate stoppages in play

“I wonder if scoring rates have anything to do with that as well. The ball’s getting hit to the boundary more often, so it’s going to take a lot longer,” Stokes said.

The data from the 2023-25 cycle supports this view to an extent.

The run rate in matches that witnessed teams being slapped with over-rate penalties was 3.85, higher but still comparable to the overall run rate of 3.64 during the WTC 2023-25 cycle, while the spike in the runs per wicket was significant.

In the nine games that saw over-rate penalties, the overall batting average was 36.44, as opposed to 29.03 across the cycle.

“I think there’s just so much that influences how your over-rates can be affected, that it can’t just be as simple as, ‘this is the time, this is what you need to do’. Because you want to keep the quality of cricket as high as you possibly can,” Stokes added.

In an era where draws are increasingly rare and teams are pushing for outright wins to consolidate their position in the WTC standings, sacrificing match quality for what seems like a clerical requirement is counterproductive, especially at a time when popularising Test cricket should be a priority.