The Cricket World Cup 2019 saw some excellent teams fight it out, to be declared the victors in the finals. India had a good knock, but ended up losing to England, and New Zealand in the semi-finals. Indian players had a dearth of boundaries in the semi-finals, scoring just one six; however that is not the case with several online betting sites—here you can score an awful lot if you employ your skills well and find the right betting site in India. However, this is 2019 and the online betting industry has only been on a high in recent times.

With the world cup having concluded, several other one day and T20 matches are being held and IPL 2020 is merely a few months away, it is indeed an exciting time to engage in online betting. Not only are there opportunities galore, with match predictions and interesting fixtures on their way, winning online bets has never been easier and more seamless as it is now.

Having eliminated India, England, led by Joe Root took on New Zealand, led by Kane Williamson in the finals. The finals witnessed some of the finest one-day cricket games ever, with a rather disappointing end: A tie between the 2 teams that was settled by a super-over.

A super-over is essentially a single over played by each team respectively, to decide the outcome of a tied match. Each team sends their best batsmen and a solitary best bowler to fight it out, and the team with the higher runs in the super-over is declared the winner.

As luck would have it though, the super-over also ended up in a tie. As per ICC rules, for super-overs that end in ties, the result will be decided by a number of factors, one of them being that the team that has scored more boundaries in game will win. This led England to be the champions of CWC 2019, while everyone’s fan favourites, New Zealand, sadly lost out. England has scored 22 fours and two sixes to New Zealand’s 16.

Cricketing fans were shocked at a rather senseless rule such as this existing, not just because a team that had played magnificently through the entire world cup lost out, but because the rule made little sense.

Cricket has always been a game of skill more than that of raw power. Although modern formats such as the T20 cricket will have you believe otherwise, building an innings from scratch, hitting the ball between gaps and taking a few quick runs while not losing a wicket is the essence of batting. That is what made Sachin Tendulkar a great batsman. Of course that can be supplemented with sixes here and there, but that should never become priority to decide the outcome of a game, not just because it makes little sense, but also because to truly preserve the value of the game, tie breaker rules must give precedence to more skill based well timed batting than muscled shots, something that the boundary rule failed to do.

Following the match, a lot of Indian greats from the past and present had criticised this rule. This included Gautam Gambhir, Rohit Sharma and Yuvraj Singh, and rightly so.

Sachin Tendulkar went forward to even suggest an alternative as having a second super-over provided the first one ends in a tie. Taking the example of extra time allotted to both teams in football, Tendulkar went on to say that not just for finals but for every one day match whatsoever, a second super-over is much more conducive and fair for deciding winners, thus echoing the sentiments of fans and cricket analysers the world over.

Keeping the sentiments of fans and the opinions of cricketers themselves in mind, ICC Cricket Committee, the Chief Executives’ Committee was thus forced to rethink its rules and make changes to make the game fairer and more in tune with what the fans want. The following changes were thus made to the previous rules:

The super-over format for deciding tie breakers in one day as well as T20 matches would be continued.
In the group stages if the super over was tied, the match would be tied as well
In the semi finals and finals, super-overs would be repeated till the tie was not resolved.

This reflects a few core philosophies that the ICC believes in. These include:

The super-over format is indeed an engaging and exciting format to decide the outcome of tied games.
For group stages a tied match with a point to each team is a perfectly reasonable outcome that does not affect the proceedings of a tournament.
Super-overs themselves and the runs scored in them are much more important than previous incidents in the match itself, including boundaries scored within the match.

Thus, the ICC were able to protect the sentiments of the fans, the opinions of the experts and its own repute in a way that both uplifted the game to greater heights and made it fairer and more exciting.