MUMBAI: In an attempt to speed up play in white-ball cricket, the ICC has decided to introduce a ‘stop clock‘ on a trial basis in men’s ODI and T20I cricket from December 2023 to April 2024.
The decision was taken at the International Cricket Council (ICC) Board meeting in Ahmedabad on Tuesday.

“The clock will be used to regulate the amount of time taken between overs.

If the bowling team is not ready to bowl the next over within 60 seconds of the previous over being completed, a five-run penalty will be imposed the third time it happens in an innings,” the ICC said in a release.
In September 2022, the MCC World Cricket committee, which includes former India captain and ex-BCCI president Sourav Ganguly, besides several other top former cricketers, renewing its calls to introduce measures aimed at speeding up play, particularly in Tests.
A massive controversy erupted during the recently-held 2023 ODI World Cup in India when Sri Lankan batsman Angelo Mathews was ‘Timed out’- the first such dismissal in international cricket, after an appeal by Bangladesh skipper Shakib Al Hasan, when he failed to face the next delivery after the dismissal of Sadeera Samarawickrama.
Hugely upset at the call, Mathews later criticised the fourth umpire while labelling Shakib’s act as “disgraceful”. However, the prestigious Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), the custodian of the ‘Laws of Cricket,’ had backed the ICC’s umpires’ verdict.
The ICC has approved changes to the pitch and outfield monitoring regulations, including a simplification of the criteria against which a pitch is assessed and increasing the threshold for when a venue could have its international status removed from five demerit points to six demerit points over a five-year period.
The ICC Board also approved new gender eligibility regulations for the international game following a 9-month consultation process with the sport’s stakeholders.
The new policy is based on the following principles (in order of priority), protection of the integrity of the women’s game, safety, fairness and inclusion, and this means any Male to Female participants who have been through any form of male puberty will not be eligible to participate in the international women’s game regardless of any surgery or gender reassignment treatment they may have undertaken.

ICC moves 2024 U-19 World Cup from Sri Lanka to South Africa
The ICC also decided to move the Under-19 World Cup, scheduled to be held from January 14 to February 15, to South Africa from Sri Lanka, in view of the administrative uncertainty in Sri Lanka Cricket.
India are the defending champions in the event, having won the last Under-19 World Cup in the West Indies in January 2022.
Confirming the terms of suspension of SLC – a decision the governing body of the game took on November 10 – the ICC Board has decided that Sri Lanka can continue to compete internationally both in bilateral cricket and ICC events, though funding to SLC will be controlled by the ICC.