England captain Ben Stokes minced no words as he fired back at the International Cricket Council (ICC) for slow over-rate penalties during the World Test Championship (WTC).
His remarks come after the Three Lions were docked two crucial WTC points for maintaining a slow over-rate during the Lord’s Test, which the hosts England won by 22 runs against India last week. Apart from two points being taken off, England were also fined 10 per cent of their match fees.
Stokes said that the rules need to be different, and venues should be considered when deliberating upon slow over rates. He said that the rules cannot be the same for the SENA countries and Asian conditions.
The England all-rounder, who was adjudged Player of the Match for his heroics with the ball in Lord’s Test, stated that spinners dominate the Asian conditions, hence overs are bowled in time. However, the same cannot be said about the SENA countries, as conditions warrant pacers getting more overs, hence a slow over-rate is maintained.
“Over rate isn’t something that I worry about, but that’s not saying that I purposely slow things down. I do understand the frustration around it, but I honestly think there needs to be a real hard look at how it’s structured. 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 70-80 per cent seam bowling,” said Stokes during a pre-match press conference ahead of the Manchester Test.
“Because a spinner’s over takes less time than a seamer’s over. So common sense would think that you should look at maybe changing how the over rates are timed in different continents. I think as well, the over rates obviously have gone down over the course of quite a few years now. There are times in games where it’s all on the line, and you won’t just throw the ball to a spinner to get your overs round. You’re not playing an international game where you’re just trying to get your over rate back. I don’t think people want to come and watch that,” he added.
Earlier, former Michael Vaughan also questioned the ICC for imposing a penalty on England and letting India off the hook. He said both teams were guilty of maintaining a slow over-rate, so both England and India were penalised.
England found guilty of breaching Code of Conduct
After the end of the Lord’s Test, the ICC issued an official release confirming the sanction on England. At that time, Stokes had accepted the charge, and hence, there was no need for a formal hearing.
“On-field umpires Paul Reiffel and Sharfuddoula Ibne Shahid, third umpire Ahsan Raza, and fourth umpire Graham Lloyd levelled the charge,” the ICC said in its official release.
Richie Richardson of the ICC Elite Panel of Match Referees imposed the sanction after England was found to be two overs short of the target, after taking time allowances into consideration.
According to Article 2.22 of the ICC Code of Conduct for Players and Player Support Personnel, players are fined five per cent of their match fee for every over their side fails to bowl in the allotted time.
Stokes further defended the slow over-rate in the Lord’s Test, saying their lone frontline spinner, Shoaib Bashir, got injured while bowling in the first innings and this too played a huge role.
“I can understand it from an external point of view around the overs, I really do. But it’s a very tough thing to do when I feel there’s more to it than just getting rounds, getting told I’ll just quicken up, get three overs. There’s a lot that actually goes on the field. You’ve got fast bowlers bending their backs consistently. So throughout the course of a game, the time of overs is going to come down because you’ve just got tired bodies,” Stokes said.
“We played for five days, that was our 15th day of cricket. We obviously had an injury to Shoaib Bashir, a spinner. So we couldn’t turn to our spinner as much as we would have liked to on day five. So we had to throw a seam at them for pretty much the whole day. So that’s obviously going to slow things down. And there are periods in the game where you do try and just slow everything down, more tactically if anything like that,” he added.