Ben Stokes thinks the ICC is being mean to England.
Hey, stop it! No sniggering over there. This is serious.
The first charge, essentially, is that in places where spinners are more-frequently used, teams tend not to have problems getting through their overs smartly, but the rate of play is necessarily slower on tracks where a huge proportion of overs are bowled by seamers. Spin-bowling overs take less time than seam-bowling ones.
At first glance at the numbers, there appears to be some truth to Stokes' claim. Of the 20 over-rates penalties that have been incurred during all three cycles of World Test Championship, 16 have come in South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia (SENA).
But then you glance at the numbers another time, and uhhh, wait a minute - nine of those 20 infringements belong to England. The next-worst team has only three over-rates infringements since mid-2019 (when the WTC began). South Africa, another SENA team, have none.
Test cricket doesn't seem to have an over-penalising problem, so much as England are slow-over rates junkies. Many of England's infringements were severe - eight overs short in Brisbane in 2021, nine overs short at Lord's in 2023, five overs short at The Oval in the same Ashes - these are "possession with intent to distribute" quantities.
The other suggestion is that if a team wraps up a Test with time to spare, they have fulfilled their responsibilities on the entertainment front, and as such, should be excused from penalties. There is more sense here, but it doesn't acknowledge that bowling fewer overs in an hour also constitute a competitive advantage. Demands on seamers' bodies in particular, are smaller the slower you bowl your overs.
In any case, the ICC playing conditions already allow for this. If a bowling team dismisses the opposition in fewer than 80 overs, match officials do not consider penalties for that innings. If a team dismisses the opposition twice in less than 160 overs in total, penalties again are not applied. So, for example, you could bowl 95 overs in the first innings and 60 overs in the second, and be five overs short in both instances, and still avoid penalties, so long as you dismiss the opposition twice.
Teams are also informed how many overs short they might be at the end of every day of play. Match officials do not lay in wait to ambush captains at the end of each Test.
And yet, Stokes has refused to sign over-rates sheets for more than a year now, like a parent withholding their signature on permission slips until their child's behaviour improves. Will the ICC still get to go on their field trip?
England do play far more Tests than any other side, so perhaps this is where some of the frustration stems from. But they don't play so many more Tests as to excuse their frequency of infringement. And there is a case for making allowances for Tests that feature a high proportion of seam-bowling overs. Even if you remove England's offences from the overall figure, the number of offences since mid-2019 stack up 7-4 against Tests played in SENA.
But these are quibbles. England's over-rates offences are mainly a problem that requires an internal remedy than one for which the ICC should be expected to serve up a solution.