Ryan Ba­choo

The In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) has an­nounced three ma­jor changes to the in­ter­na­tion­al game which will come in­to ef­fect on June 1.

Um­pires will no longer be re­quired to give a soft sig­nal while re­fer­ring de­ci­sions to the TV um­pires. The on-field um­pires will con­sult with the TV um­pire be­fore any de­ci­sions are tak­en.

Sec­ond­ly, hel­met pro­tec­tion will be manda­to­ry in in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et for the fol­low­ing high in­jury risk po­si­tions: (i) when bat­ters are fac­ing fast bowlers, (ii) when wick­et­keep­ers are stand­ing up to the stumps, and (iii) when field­ers are close to the bat­ter in front of the wick­et.

And fi­nal­ly, any runs scored off a Free Hit when the ball hits the stumps will count as runs scored, to be con­sis­tent with all oth­er runs scored from a free hit.

It comes af­ter the Chief Ex­ec­u­tives’ Com­mit­tee rat­i­fied rec­om­men­da­tions from the Sourav Gan­gu­ly-led Men’s Crick­et Com­mit­tee which were al­so en­dorsed by the Women’s Crick­et Com­mit­tee.

Sourav Gan­gu­ly said: “Soft sig­nals have been dis­cussed at pre­vi­ous crick­et com­mit­tee meet­ings over the last cou­ple of years. The com­mit­tee de­lib­er­at­ed this at length and con­clud­ed that soft sig­nals were un­nec­es­sary and at times con­fus­ing since re­fer­rals of catch­es may seem in­con­clu­sive in re­plays.”

“We al­so dis­cussed play­er safe­ty, which is very im­por­tant for us. The com­mit­tee de­cid­ed that it was best to make the use of hel­mets manda­to­ry in cer­tain po­si­tions to en­sure the safe­ty of play­ers.”