New Zealand Cricket fraternity reacts to ICC scrapping boundary count rule

Every single cricket lover around the globe will have fresh memories of the recently concluded ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 which took place in England, especially the epic final match between hosts England and New Zealand. It was a child’s play when the biggest match in the history of cricket have to choose a winner based on a biased rule.

Yes, we are talking about the boundary count rule which took the cricketing world by storm after the 2019 World Cup final. Honestly speaking, before the match not even ten percent of fans knew about this particular rule of ICC, but after the dramatic final, almost all the people got to know about it as the hot topic trended on all social media platforms.

Batting first, New Zealand scored a decent 241 on a balanced surface of Lord’s cricket ground which was offering enough for the bowlers. Looking at the total especially in the World Cup finals, it was a defendable total to an extent. But there was one man in English batting line-up who was having a purple patch throughout the tournament – Ben Stokes. He single-handedly helped his side equal the Blackcaps’ total in the run chase.

As per the standard ICC rulebook, the match was taken to the super over, first time in an ODI World Cup final. England batting first smashed 15 in their super over and set a modest target of 16 in front of the Blackcaps. And for everyone’s surprise even super over cannot separate these two sides when New Zealand managed to pile the same amount as England in their quota of six deliveries.

But the winner of the ultimate glory in world cricket was decided by the boundary count rule. Eventually, England won the match scoring 22 boundaries to that of 17 hit by the Blackcaps.

ICC changes the rule

Now, ICC has come up with a new rule to repeat the Super Over until one team scores more runs than the other team, “In group stages, if the Super Over is tied, the match will be tied. In Semi-Finals and Finals, there is one change to the Super Over-regulation in keeping with the basic principle of scoring more runs than the opponent to win, the Super Over will be repeated until one team has more runs than the other,” ICC said in a media release on 14th of October.

New Zealand Cricketers react

Some heartbroken New Zealand cricketers took to Twitter to express their disappointment. James Neesham, the all-rounder tweeted, “Next on the agenda: Better binoculars for the ice spotters on the Titanic.” Whereas former player Craig McMillan said, “Bit late ICC.” McMillan even pointed out four bonus runs given to England courtesy an umpiring blunder saying, How about fixing the other rule issue @ICC……a dead ball once the ball has hit/deflected from a batsman??

~ Written by Chinmay Jathar