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Drag over my soapbox Roarers, because the summer’s bone of contention has already emerged.
The International Cricket Council’s attempts to curb slow over rates are a classic case of having plenty of evidence to suggest something is being done, while in reality the problem is as bad as it’s always been.
India, quite miraculously, had managed to start the 90th over of Day 1 yesterday when they took the wicket of Brad Haddin. Considering what might have been when David Warner and Michael Clarke were scoring freely, India’s late fight back to take 3/9 in the last 20 minutes was rather impressive.
>>FOLLOW THE LIVE BLOG OF DAY TWO
But their over rate in the first two sessions of the Test was glacial.
By tea, Australia were belting along at 2/238 and at more than 4.7 runs per over, but to that point of the day, India had only bowled 50 overs. Their hourly rates across the first two sessions of the series were 11, 13, 13, and 13 again.
For information, the current ICC Standard Test Match Playing Conditions states under section 16.3, ‘Minimum Over Rates’:
“The minimum over rate to be achieved in Test Matches will be 15 overs per hour.”
Knowing how far behind the over rate his side was, Indian stand-in captain Virat Kohli was forced to bowl the part-time offies of Murali Vijay in tandem with debutant leggie Karn Sharma for 13 overs after the break before finally bringing pace spearhead Ishant Sharma back into the attack.
Kohli kept a spinner on at one end until the delayed drinks break – because overtime had already been declared a requirement by tea – and he did manage to claw back some ground, getting through 23 overs in the hour-and-a-quarter to the finals drinks break of the day.
That left 17 overs for the last 75 minutes of the day, and with Vijay and Karn Sharma back on in tandem for another five overs prior to taking the new ball, Kohli had managed to dig himself out of the hole.
There was a wonderful coincidence in the middle of all this, too; James Brayshaw revealed the shallowness of his Indian player research on the Channel Nine coverage by declaring Indian wicketkeeper Wriddhiman Saha – in just his third Test – wouldn’t have had the pleasure of playing at the Adelaide Oval before.
A subtle note from the Nine statistician caused Brayshaw to admit that Saha’s last Test was in fact in Adelaide during India’s last Australian tour in 2011/2012, where he had to deputise for MS Dhoni after the regular skipper was suspended for… wait for it… slow over rates!
I’m not going to go into detail about what’s said regarding over rates in the Playing Conditions, or the ‘Code of Conduct for Players and Player Support Personnel’, mainly because the wording is ridiculously confusing.
At one point in Appendix 2 of the Code of Conduct, which deals with the calculation of over rates and any punishment thereafter, it seems to say that a third Minor Over Rate Offence within the same format (i.e. Test, ODI, or Twenty20cricket) within a 12-month period will be treated as a first offence.
And I sincerely hope I’ve misread that completely – you can check out the Standard Test Match Playing Conditions, and the Code of Conduct.
What gets my goat about all this is the Playing Conditions stating that the “actual over rate will be calculated at the end of the match by the umpires and will be the average rate which is achieved by the fielding team across both of the batting team’s innings.”
And underneath this statement are all kind of allowances for the fielding side, including time taken to attend to injuries – such as Clarke’s back flare-up yesterday – and the effective time of taking wickets.
In effect, it means that as long as the over rates across both innings as calculated at the end of the Test meet the requirement of 15 overs per hour give or take, it matters not if only 70 over are bowled on Day 1 and 120 are bowled on Day 3.
Once again, this is international cricket taking the paying public for suckers. Try telling the people who paid $150 to watch 70 overs crawl by on the first day that they got their full value for money. And it’s exactly the same for advertisers paying large amounts expecting x number of ads at the end of every over in a day’s play.
A quick search on the ICC website shows six different instances of international teams being penalised for slow over rates in 2013 alone. Curiously, the search results didn’t include 2014, and England skipper Alastair Cook was just last week forced to sit out the fourth ODI against Sri Lanka for a second over-rate penalty in the last 12 months.
England were pinged against India earlier this year and in addition to the one-game ban, Cook was fined 20 per cent of his match fee, while the rest of his team were fined 10 per cent too.
But fines and suspensions clearly aren’t working. I’ve already mentioned Dhoni, and I can recall Sourav Ganguly being suspended from both Tests and ODIs because of over rates too. Ricky Ponting may have even fallen foul as well, and there would be many more examples.
So to repeat something I’ve said on The Roar a lot in my time, and something that Expert colleague and former Test bowler Jason Gillespie agreed a fortnight ago was “a good idea”, there is one simple way for the ICC to properly address this long-running issue.
Penalise teams on the scoreboard. The only way teams will properly learn the lesson of their tardiness is to be penalised x runs per over they’re behind the required rate.
And forget making the calculations at the end of the Test; do it at the end of the bowling innings so that the penalties are applied immediately. If a team is three overs behind the rate at the end of an innings – even after all the allowances are considered – then add 15 or however many runs to their target instantly.
The impact will be direct, and even more so if the sluggish team happens to lose that game by less than the penalty applied.
The moment a team loses a hard-fought series by virtue of slow over-rates will be the day the problem disappears. Pity the first captain to lose a World Cup final, or the Ashes because of run rates.
But the problem would be solved.