ICC Approves New Gender Eligibility Regulations, CEC Agrees to Introduce Stop Clock on Trial Basis in Men’s White-ball Formats – News18

The International Cricket Council held a meeting on Tuesday where the board members discussed several agendas including Sri Lanka cricket, gender eligibility regulations and the introduction of a stop clock on a trial basis in men’s ODI and T20I cricket.

The cricket governing body has approved new gender eligibility regulations for international cricket after consulting with the stakeholders in the sports. It took a 9-month consultation process before the ICC made their decision.

“The new policy is based on the following principles (in order of priority), protection of the integrity of the women’s game, safety, fairness and inclusion, and this means any Male to Female participants who have been through any form of male puberty will not be eligible to participate in the international women’s game regardless of any surgery or gender reassignment treatment they may have undertaken,” the ICC stated.

ICC Chief Executive Geoff Allardice said: “The changes to the gender eligibility regulations resulted from an extensive consultation process and is founded in science and aligned with the core principles developed during the review. Inclusivity is incredibly important to us as a sport, but our priority was to protect the integrity of the international women’s game and the safety of players.”

The Chief Executives’ Committed (CEC) endorsed a plan to accelerate the development of female match officials which includes equalising match day pay for ICC umpires across men’s and women’s cricket and ensuring there is one neutral umpire in every ICC Women’s Championship series from January 2024.

Meanwhile, a stop clock rule has also been introduced to cricket on a trial basis in men’s ODI and T20I cricket from December 2023 to April 2024.

The rule has been introduced to make the sport a bit fast-paced. The stop clock will be used to monitor the time taken between the overs.

“If the bowling team is not ready to bowl the next over within 60 seconds of the previous over being completed, a 5-run penalty will be imposed the third time it happens in an innings,” the ICC stated.

The ICC has also made changes to their regulations to monitor the pitch and the outfield.

“Changes to the pitch and outfield monitoring regulations were also approved, including a simplification of the criteria against which a pitch is assessed and increasing the threshold for when a venue could have its international status removed from five demerit points to six demerit points over a five-year period,” the ICC stated.