The International Cricket Council (ICC) has announced the interim changes for playing the sport that includes a ban on the use of saliva to shine the ball and allowing home umpires in international series. The draft has recommendations from the Anil Kumble led Cricket Committee, aimed at reducing the risk posed by COVID-19 and for the safety of players, match officials and staff, when cricket resumes.
From now onwards, teams will be allowed to replace players who will show symptoms of coronavirus during a match. In case of concussion replacements, the match referee will approve the nearest replacement. However, the regulation for COVID-19 replacements will not be applicable in ODI and T20I.
Bowlers will not be permitted to use saliva to shine the ball. If a player does so, the team will receive two warnings per innings and a five run penalty to the batting side. Also, the appointment of neutral match officials will be temporarily removed from all formats of the game and only locally based match officials will be selected from the Emirates ICC Elite Panel of Match Officials and the Emirates ICC International Panel of Match Officials.
Here’s the tweet by ICC about this announcement:
JUST IN: Interim changes to the ICC's playing regulations have been confirmed.
Full details
https://t.co/GfQ8l6Qyra pic.twitter.com/4cT2YpOaEO — ICC (@ICC) June 9, 2020
