CricPulse
If you watched a Test match in the past year and saw the fielding side get docked five runs for taking too long between overs, or noticed ODI bowlers suddenly getting reverse swing again in the death overs, you saw the ICC’s updated Playing Conditions in action. These changes rolled out through 2025 and are now standard across international cricket, but they rarely get explained in one place — most coverage is a single headline about one rule, not the full picture. This guide covers every change: what it replaced, why the ICC made it, and what it means if you are the one holding the scorebook.
Why the Rules Changed
The updated Playing Conditions came from the ICC Men’s Cricket Committee, chaired by Sourav Ganguly, and were framed around three goals: keep the over rate up without relying on fines that arrive days later, restore some balance between bat and ball in the last overs of an ODI innings, and close off catches that had started to look more like gymnastics than fielding. None of these are law changes in the strict MCC sense yet — they are ICC Playing Conditions, which apply to international cricket immediately and typically get folded into the formal Laws of Cricket later.
The Stop Clock: A Five-Run Penalty, Not a Fine
This is the change with the most direct effect on the scoreline. The fielding side must be ready to bowl the first ball of the next over within 60 seconds of the previous over ending. Miss that window for the third time in an innings, after two prior warnings, and the umpires dock the fielding team five penalty runs — added to the batting side’s total immediately, on the spot.
How the warnings reset: a team gets two warnings per 80-over block before the five-run penalty kicks in on the third breach. The warning count resets to zero every time a new 80-over block starts in that innings — the same point at which a new ball becomes available in Tests. So a team cannot carry a “strike” from over 75 into over 85; they get a clean slate.
The stop clock started in white-ball cricket first and was extended to Test cricket with the opening match of the 2025–27 World Test Championship cycle. It has already produced five-run penalties in early WTC fixtures — a visible, immediate consequence that the old system of post-match fines never had. For scorers, the practical point is that a stop-clock penalty is scored as five penalty runs to the batting team, logged the moment the umpire signals it, not adjusted retroactively at the end of the innings.
ODIs Return to One Ball After Over 34
For more than a decade, ODIs were played with two new balls, one from each end, for the full 50 overs. It kept the ball harder for longer, which helped scoring, but it also meant the ball rarely got old or rough enough to reverse swing — bowlers lost one of their sharpest death-overs weapons, and the last ten overs increasingly turned into a straight slog.
Under the updated conditions, ODIs still start with two new balls, but after over 34 the fielding captain has to choose one of the two balls to continue with for the rest of the innings. The chosen ball is now roughly 34 overs old rather than fresh, which brings back the conventional reverse-swing window in overs 35–50 that two-new-ball ODIs had largely removed.
- Overs 1–34: two new balls in play, one per end, as before.
- Over 35 onward: fielding captain selects one ball; the other is retired for the rest of the innings.
- Applies to: all ICC-sanctioned ODIs — bilateral series and ICC events alike.
The New Boundary Catch Rule
Boundary catches got more spectacular in recent years — fielders leaping from outside the rope, parrying the ball back infield mid-air, landing outside, jumping again, sometimes touching it a third time before completing the catch. A few of these went viral for the wrong reasons, and the ICC tightened the law to draw a firmer line between an athletic legal catch and a multi-bounce sequence that stretched the definition past what most viewers would call fair.
The rule in plain terms: once a fielder makes airborne contact with the ball beyond the boundary, they must land and stay inside the field of play. If, after that first contact, the fielder is still outside the boundary and airborne, they get one further airborne touch beyond the rope — and after that touch, they must land wholly inside the boundary. This applies even if a second fielder completes the catch.
A useful reference point: Suryakumar Yadav’s catch in the 2024 T20 World Cup final — jumping back from the boundary, parrying the ball forward while still airborne, then landing inside the rope to complete the catch — is fully legal under the new wording. What is no longer legal is the “bunny hop” pattern of repeated airborne touches while drifting further outside the boundary before finally coming back in.
Two More Changes Worth Knowing
Deliberate Short Runs
The five-run penalty for a deliberate short run already existed. The new addition: the fielding captain now chooses which batter takes strike for the next delivery, instead of the non-offending batter automatically keeping strike. It closes a small tactical gap where a batting side could profit from a short run even after being penalised for it.
DRS Wicket Zone
For lbw reviews, the “wicket zone” used to be defined as a rectangle sized to the outer edge of off and leg stump. It is now the actual outline of the stumps and bails — a smaller, more literal target that removes a sliver of margin that had crept into ball-tracking decisions.
Trial Rules to Watch
Alongside the confirmed changes, the ICC greenlit two trials for Full Member cricket. Because these are trials rather than permanent conditions, treat them as provisional — check your relevant board’s latest playing conditions before assuming either applies to a specific series:
Like-for-like injury replacements in domestic first-class cricket — a player seriously injured after the match has started (including the pre-match warm-up) can be replaced for the rest of the match, closing a gap that previously left injured teams a player short for days.
A revised wide-ball reference point in ODIs and T20Is — the batter’s leg position at the point of delivery becomes the reference for a wide, even if the batter shifts across afterward, which is meant to stop bowlers being penalised for a batter’s late movement.
Summary Table: What Changed
| Change | Old Condition | New Condition |
|---|---|---|
| Stop clock | Slow over rates fined after the match | 5-run penalty in-match after 2 warnings, per 80-over block |
| ODI ball usage | Two new balls for all 50 overs | Two balls to over 34, then one chosen ball to over 50 |
| Boundary catches | Multiple airborne touches beyond the rope allowed | One further airborne touch beyond the rope, then must land inside |
| Deliberate short run | 5-run penalty; non-offending batter kept strike | 5-run penalty; fielding captain chooses who takes strike |
| DRS wicket zone | Rectangle sized to stump width | Actual outline of stumps and bails |
What This Means for Club and School Cricket
ICC Playing Conditions govern international cricket directly — your Saturday league match is not automatically bound by them. But a few of these changes are worth borrowing at club level even without a formal mandate. A soft stop-clock convention (say, a captain-agreed 90-second changeover target) keeps a two-innings club match on schedule without needing a match referee to enforce it. The boundary catch clarification is useful to know if your league plays with a boundary rope at all, since “did they stay in the field of play” disputes are exactly the kind of thing that ruins a Saturday afternoon. Most local leagues will only adopt these once they filter down through national board playing conditions, so check with your league secretary before assuming any of them apply — but knowing what is coming means fewer surprises when they do.
Scoring These Changes Correctly
For anyone keeping the book, the change that actually touches the scorecard is the stop-clock penalty — it is five runs added to the batting team’s total, logged as penalty runs at the moment the umpire signals it, exactly like a deliberate short run penalty. The ball-change rule and the boundary catch law affect what happens on the field, not how it is recorded; a legal boundary catch is scored as a catch regardless of which version of the law made it legal. If you are scoring with CricPulse, penalty runs are logged the same way as any other extra — see our guide to cricket extras for exactly how wides, no-balls, byes and penalty runs are recorded, and our complete guide to scoring a match for the full workflow.
These changes sit alongside a run of other rule clarifications worth knowing if you follow the Laws closely — see our guides to the non-striker run-out rule, the follow-on rule, and how DLS targets are calculated when rain interrupts a match.
Quick Answers
Does the stop clock apply to club cricket?
Not automatically. It is an ICC Playing Condition for international cricket. Domestic boards and local leagues can choose to adopt a version of it, but most club cricket still relies on umpires and captains managing over rate informally.
Is the two-new-ball change permanent in ODIs?
It is a confirmed Playing Condition, not a trial, so it applies to all ICC-sanctioned ODIs going forward — not a temporary test like the wide-ball reference point change.
Was Suryakumar Yadav’s 2024 World Cup catch legal under the new rule?
Yes. His catch — one airborne parry back inside, landing inside the boundary — fits inside the “one further airborne touch, then land inside” limit the new wording sets out.
The Bottom Line
None of these changes reinvent cricket, but together they close a handful of gaps that had been building for years — over rates with no in-game consequence, ODI death overs with no reverse swing, and boundary catches judged more by highlight-reel spectacle than a clear standard. If you score, umpire, or just follow the game closely, the stop clock is the one to watch on the scorecard itself; the rest change what happens on the field more than what goes in the book.