Every year the International Cricket Council (ICC) committee sits for its annual meeting, they bring about a certain amount of change in the game’s rules or it how should it be conducted! This year, the ICC has released the updated version of the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern (DLS) system and also introduced new ICC Code of Conduct and ICC Playing Conditions.

The latest version released by the ICC was the third version of the DLS System when it was introduced into international cricket in 2014. The newest version of DLS System would see analysis being done on the basis of 700 ODIs, and 428 ODIs.

The scoring patterns in both the formats, ODIs and T20Is were studied and so were the outcomes of men’s and women’s international matches. It was observed that the scoring rates were different; however, wicket-adjusted resource utilisation rates were somewhere similar.

Talking about ICC’s Code of Conduct, the cricket governing body introduced a few new offences and brought minor changes in the existing offences in the ICC Code of Conduct for Players and Player Support Personnel. The following changes will take place from September 30 too.

Attempting to gain an unfair advantage, personal abuse, audible obscenity, disobeying an umpire’s instructions were some of the newly introduced offences. On the other hand, changing the condition of the ball was changed to Level 3 offence from the earlier Level 2 offence.

Speaking about ICC Playing Conditions, the cricket body didn’t introduce many changes in the game, keeping the fact in mind that the next ICC World Cup 2019, is less than a year away, now. However, there were a couple of tweaks in cricket operations.

The new rules would see that the match will now be allowed to be concluded before a scheduled interval, as per Clauses 11.4 (ODI), 11.7 and 12.8 (Tests). The Clause 19 (of Tests, ODIs, and T20Is) was also tweaked - Unless the boundary line is the maximum 90 yards from the middle of the pitch, the rope cannot be any more than 10 yards from the edge of the available playing area.

The new rules, guidelines and measures discussed and announced by the ICC, on Saturday, will come into effect from September 30, i.e. Sunday. It also means that when South Africa competes with Zimbabwe in the first ODI in Kimberly, on the same day, the new set of rules will be in effect.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Sep 29, 2018 02:27 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).