Kit Harris picks the bones out of a modern problem.
In the 2024 edition of Wisden, Andy Bull, a senior sportswriter for The Guardian, agonised over one of Test cricket’s most esoteric (but most intractable) problems: the over-rate. The number of overs bowled per hour, he found, had fallen at a steady rate, from more than 20 in the 1940s to less than 14 today.
Bull focused on professional cricket, but the club game has gone the same way. In the 1990s, a 50-over league game, starting at one o’clock, was commonplace. It is rarer now: 50 has become 45, just as 40 has become 35 on Sundays. As recently as a decade ago, a team could start at two, and bowl 16 overs an hour, meaning a 40-over game – with a half-hour for tea – was all over by half past seven. In many clubs today, this would be an impossibility.
In this summer’s Test series, between England and India, the over-rate has been as slow as ever. After the hosts were docked two World Test Championship points at Lord’s, captain Ben Stokes said that expectations should be lowered in countries where seamers – with longer run-ups – do most of the bowling.
At least Stokes is showing he cares. It wasn’t always clear. As recently as November, he described the points system as “utterly confusing”. A few days later, he responded sarcastically to a three-point penalty: “Good on you ICC. Finished the game with 10 hours of play still left.”
It was, in one sense, a blinkered reaction. Mockers of Bazball pointed, in early 2025, to England’s final position in the table: fifth, just ahead of Sri Lanka; hardly a vindication of the team’s bold approach. But had they not been docked 22 points for slow over-rates – no other team lost more than 13 – they would have been third, behind Australia and India. And confusing though the system may be, people remember where you finish. In 2021, the Australians found themselves in a worse predicament still: without an over-rate penalty, they’d have reached the final.
So much for the consequences. But the question remains – indeed, it is seldom even asked – what are we trying to achieve? Stokes, perhaps, would argue that it doesn’t matter how many overs are bowled in a day, as long as the game is entertaining, and played to a finish. Maybe he has a point. If Jofra Archer bowls at 90mph, Stokes completes a five-for, Rishabh Pant bats like a one-footed hero, and England’s openers put on 166 at five an over, but there isn’t a full allocation of 90 overs, does that represent short change? Over-rates may be down by a third compared with days of old, but the run-rate has doubled, and there are fewer drawn Tests. To some, that may seem a reasonable trade.
Last month, the ICC announced they would introduce their limited-overs stop-clock in Tests. The fielding side will be required to begin the next over within 60 seconds of the last. After two warnings, the batting side will be awarded five penalty runs.
It remains to be seen whether the stop-clock will help the public see 90 overs in a day, but there is no reason to believe it will. The ICC’s thinking is flawed in two ways. First, it suggests that the principal – or at least a significant – reason behind the problem is sluggishness between overs. But watch a session of Test cricket unfold: the scheduled drinks, the unscheduled drinks, the substitutes with new gloves, the ball changes, the injury breaks, the concussion checks, the decision reviews. From a spectator’s perspective, these are the things that bite the big chunks out of the 90 overs. The ICC insist that the umpires already account for all those interruptions, and they’re not included in the over-rate calculations. The new ruling might encourage teams to move quickly enough to avoid punishment. But for the paying punter, what good will the stop-clock do? Nine times out of ten, overs go unbowled because of all the interruptions that are allowed.
The ICC’s other false assumption is that the umpires are capable of enforcing a change. But there is more substitute teacher than upstart policeman about a Test official. When, for the umpteenth time, the sub comes with new gloves and a bottle of water, the men in charge show their displeasure with little more than a gentle inclination of the head. They have all the assertiveness and presence of a nail-file in a swordfight. Now they will be shown a clock between overs, counting them down to the moment when they might actually have to do something. It is quite an indictment of the umpires’ game-management skills.
In Test and first-class cricket, then, let the cricket do the talking, and call it seven hours of play, not 90 overs. Set the over-rate aside unless the match is drawn – and double the deduction if it is.
Kit Harris is Assistant Editor of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.
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