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Strategic time-outs, a spinner bowling 10 balls and innings lasting 65 minutes...
English cricket was given a glimpse of its future yesterday when a strategic time- out led to a dramatic momentum swing in one of the hundred trial matches.
in the first of two behind-closeddoors contests at Trent Bridge, the south were cruising towards their victory target of 138 at 66 without loss after just 25 balls when north captain samit Patel called for the two- and- a- halfminute team talk with coach Mark Ramprakash. What followed was almost too good to be true.
‘Ramps said what he thought and i thought we needed to bowl, if the bowler was comfortable, wide to the left-handers — because they had two lefties in — to make sure they’re hitting to the bigger side of the ground and bowl wide yorkers,’ Patel said.
Warwickshire’s Ed Pollock holed out soon afterwards and the momentum of the match swung further via another tactical element when leicestershire off-spinner Rob sayer took three wickets in five balls from the Radcliffe Road end and was immediately switched to the other for another five which included the dismissal of Paul Walter, who had looked well set, for a top score of 40.
A bowler can bowl 10 consecutive balls regardless of the change of ends.
Although time-outs feature in the indian Premier league, where despite being termed strategic they are effectively commercial ones, they have not been used domestically here before.
They will be available to take between the end of the power play and the 70-ball mark.
Yesterday they were taken at the fielding captain’s behest, although the tournament’s rule-makers remain open to them being coach-led.
Their inclusion appears at odds with the ECB’s desire to speed the game up to better fit terrestrial TV schedules — the BBC will screen 10 matches in the inaugural season in two years’ time. however, reducing the 19 changes of overs in a Twenty20 to nine for this format, the organisers argue, buys back time. Trent Woodhill, the Australian consultant drafted in to advise the ECB on cricket- specific issues, estimates that even with the pressure of playing a match on live television, an innings will naturally conclude inside 67- and- a- half minutes. That means that with a quarter-hour changeover a match lasts two-and-a-half hours. All four innings here were over inside the target of 65. Otherwise the ECB resisted radical changes mooted when the hundred concept was launched in the spring.
Wicketkeepers have so far reported back that the flow of the game is improved by reducing the need to run 50 yards to change position and overnight player feedback will determine whether any other innovations join the time-outs today.
Patel believes the scoreboard needs to better reflect balls remaining, while Daryl Mitchell, the PCA chairman who played in the second match, says umpire signals are required every five balls to keep the crowd aware of bowling changes. Yesterday the power play was 20 balls at the start of an innings, having been 25 and 30 balls in previous days. A second 10-ball block could yet be trialled later in an innings.
The only other challenge to traditional cricket etiquette in nottingham was the use of two substitutes per side.
That is in a bid to have the most agile Xi on the field at all times — switches are made at the end of 10-ball blocks — and the new man in facing the next ball in the event of a catch being taken when the batsmen have crossed.