ICC bans use of saliva to shine the ball

Covid-19 replacements and the much-talked-about anti-saliva rule are now a reality, even if only for an interim period, as recommendations from the Anil Kumble-led Cricket Committee were approved by the International Cricket Council's Chief Executives' Committee on Tuesday.

In a statement released, pertaining replacement players, the ICC stated that teams will be allowed to replace players displaying symptoms of Covid-19 during a Test match.

Much like the law regarding concussion replacements, the match referee has the authority to approve the nearest like-for-like replacement. Also, these replacement rules will not be applicable in One-Day Internationals and Twenty20 Internationals.

As for shining the ball, players will not be allowed apply saliva. Should a player revert to the habit and use saliva in the early stages of this transition period, umpires will show leniency. But if the player continues to do so, the ICC stated that the corresponding team will be given a warning.

"A team can be issued up to two warnings per innings but repeated use of saliva on the ball will result in a 5-run penalty to the batting side. Whenever saliva is applied to the ball, the umpires will be instructed to clean the ball before play recommences," the statement read.

In other ratified recommendations, the requirement to appoint neutral match officials will be temporarily removed from the playing conditions for all international formats. The ICC will appoint locally-based match officials from the Elite Panel of match officials and the International Panel of match officials.

There will also be an additional unsuccessful DRS review for each team in each innings of the match, increasing the number of unsuccessful appeals per innings for each team to three for Tests and two for white-ball formats.