by When England and the West Indies meet for the opening Twenty20 in Barbados, they will take part in a new experiment. For the first time ever in an international game, teams will be able to throw their innings out for bowling too slowly.
At Kensington Oval, the fielding teams must be ready with the first ball of each within 60 seconds of the previous owner’s end. If not, they will receive an immediate penalty of five runs. If a penalty is incurred on the outside of the field, they will start their own innings at -5 runs; if the second pitch is hit, then their total – and the target of the chasing team – will be cut by five runs.
The new rules come within a wider context: sports focusing on speed of play. Rugby union, tennis, basketball, American football and baseball are among the sports that have tried to speed up games in recent years.
More than anything, these steps are a response to a diminishing height. In 2004, knowledge workers in the US transferred tasks on their computer about every 150 seconds, Gloria Mark, a professor at the University of California, has documented. When she did the same study in 2012, it halved, to 75 seconds. By 2022, the figure had fallen to 47 seconds.
The focus on the speed of play reflects the understanding that sports, more than ever, are in competition with each other. Fans can now watch almost any sporting event from anywhere in the world. Where the sport once had distinct seasons, many games are now essentially the busiest 12 months of the year, with Showcase A cricket.
The stopwatch is a response to the T20 paradox. The shortest of the three international formats is also the slowest: fewer bats per hour are moved in T20 than the other two formats. As of 2019, Sky Sports statistician Benedict Bermange calculates that 20 overs of Test cricket take 87 minutes on average; 20 overs of a one-day international take a minute more. But it takes 97 minutes for 20 T20 players.
And so a game designed to be completed in two hours and 45 minutes, when it was created in 2003, now regularly stretches to four hours or more. This affects fans – especially those with young families – and broadcasters alike.
Cricket’s transatlantic cousin, baseball, has long faced the same issues, with concerns that the sharp increase in the length of games was alienating the new generation. In April, Major League Baseball introduced a stop clock, limiting how long both batters and pitchers were between pitches.
The results were amazing. Twenty-four minutes were shaved off the average length of a nine-innings match, which fell from three hours and four minutes to two hours and 40 minutes – the lowest figure since 1985. Although some players complained that the clock stopped their preparation, The changes were widely praised.
“There were seconds to save, hundreds of times per game, for little cost,” says Ben Lindbergh, journalist and co-author of The MVP Machine. “The keys to the clock’s success were a gradual implementation, starting with several seasons of testing and tweaking in the minor leagues; and clear, consistent, universal enforcement when the new timer is implemented. Most skeptics, players included, were won over once they saw how fast the ball was going with the clock.”
Ahead of the first T20 in Barbados, Chris Woakes revealed that players are open to the tweak in cricket as well. “It makes sense – hopefully it speeds up the game a little bit,” he said. “We’re in the entertainment business and we have to make sure the audience is happy too. So I think it’s a good idea.”
The stop-clock goes much further than previous attempts to speed up the pace of play in the international game. Only four, rather than five, fielders are allowed to be on the edge of the boundary while they complete the innings.
The stopwatch will first be trialled until April. But the experience of basketball shows that, while there may be initial frustration among the players – and perhaps a brief spurt for teams approaching five runs – they should settle into the new rhythm soon.
Ultimately, the threat of taking runners off the pace should increase, and teams are rarely penalized. But, while the stoppage clock is welcome, it is imagined that the field teams are solely responsible for slowing down the game. By demanding new pairs of gloves and drinks, so do batsmen, which the stopwatch – unlike its baseball equivalent – does not yet recognize.
If the stoppage clock went a few minutes faster without any unforeseen consequences, it could become a permanent feature of T20 by the T20 World Cup in June. But if the trial is successful, it should not be limited to T20 alone: seven wickets a day were lost due to poor rates during the Ashes.
