DRS Set To Make A Presence In The Upcoming BBL As The Tournament Officials Aim To Emulate ECB's Overrate Rule To Crackdown On Slow Play

Ahead of the upcoming season of the Big Bash League (BBL) the officials are looking at rules to ensure that the duration of matches is shortened, and in a bid to do so, they are keeping a close eye on the newly introduced over-rate violation rule by the ECB for the inaugural season of the ‘Hundred’.

The ECB, on Monday, announced the playing conditions for the ‘Hundred’ which includes forcing the bowling team which is guilty of breaching the over-rate to bring an extra fielder in the 30-yard circle from the time the penalty is incurred.

The average time taken to complete a BBL game has exploded in the past few years, and the league’s boss, Alistair Dobson, has admitted that a rule similar to the Hundred and one that is already in place in the Vitality T20 Blast, where an extra fielder must be brought inside the circle for every ball that is delivered beyond the designated time interval of an hour and 15 minutes per innings, might come into play in the forthcoming season of the T20 league.

“It’ll probably take something as creative as that to turn that trend around,” Alastair Dobson told cricket.com.au. ‘’There’s a whole range of levers you can pull, whether it’s penalties like that or incentives the other way,” he added.

“I think that’s a really creative way and if it can be officiated effectively and everyone goes in knowing what the rules are, I think that’s an interesting way to go about it,’’ he added.

“We’re really mindful of the length of games. Our data shows they’ve started to lengthen more than we’d probably like in the last couple of years and that’s something we’re looking at closely in terms of what options we’ve got.” he said.

DRS set to be introduced in the upcoming season of the BBL?

Apart from this, the BBL bigwigs are also looking to introduce a handful of new rules for the upcoming season

The new set of rules is likely to include the introduction of the ‘Decision Review System’ for the first time ever in the competition.

The lack of DRS became a raging point of discussion last season following a plethora of abysmal decisions by the umpires.

‘’If we do bring something in, it’ll be unique to the BBL,” he said. “Our proposition is around quick, fast entertainment and putting kids and families first, so if we were to bring something in, there’s an opportunity to do something really creative around it,’’ he said.

“It’s on the cards. Whatever we bring in needs to be reliable and deliverable. When we play at a mixture of big stadiums and regional venues and multiple games in one day, they all create some considerations that probably don’t exist in a lot of other competitions.” added Dobson.

The playing conditions may well be finalized in the coming months, which is also likely to determine the fate of the three gimmicks that the BBL introduced last season- Power Surge, the Big Bash Boost, and X-factor player

”Nothing’s locked in, but there’s a couple of ideas floating around that we think could be interesting,” Dobson said. ”Clearly the Power Surge was a hit (last season and) I think it’s fair to say we’ll be keeping that. That was more successful than we probably could have hoped.

The Bash Boost and X-Factor we think broadly played their role, but there’s a couple of steps in the process still to go before that’s cemented. Each year, we have a process where we consider new ideas and Playing Conditions and we’re prepared to bring in anything that we think will add to the competition,” he added.

Also Read- The Hundred: ECB Announces Playing Conditions For The Inaugural Season