The 6IXTY format: Cricket West Indies are set to introduce the inaugural edition of a new 60-ball tournament in a couple of months.
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Although debatable, but the entertainment quotient in the game of Cricket these days have become inversely proportional to the duration of each of these matches. The investment in new innovative formats perhaps suggest that this might be the way forward as far as the franchise-based leagues are concerned.
Thus, after the successful introduction of the various T20 leagues by Cricket boards across the world, innovative formats like the T10 league and ‘The Hundred’ followed suit as well.
Now, the West Indies board along with the organizers of the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) are all set to commence with what is known as ‘The 6IXTY’ – a brand new 60-ball tournament with some interesting twists, which will be played amongst the men’s and women’s CPL franchise teams.
The 6IXTY format
The debut season of ‘The 6IXTY’ is slated to be played between August 24 and August 28 this year, with the present six men’s CPL franchise and the newly announced three women’s CPL franchises to be the partaking teams.
As the name suggests, 60 legal deliveries would be bowled in each innings, with the cushion of only 6 wickets available with each team. But, this is just the tip of an iceberg.
While each team will be granted the two Powerplay Overs, if the batting side manages to hit a couple of Sixes in the first 12 deliveries of the innings, an extra Powerplay Over gets activated as a bonus.
Additionally, the bowling teams would bowl 30 deliveries from one end, and then the remaining 30 from the other end, with the swapping of ends to not take place after each Over (comprising six balls).
Moreover, if the fielding team fails to bowl out the Overs within 45 minutes, a fielder will be removed for the final over of the innings as the slow Over rate penalty.
A bit ambiguous as of now, there is also a concept of the ‘mystery free hit’, which would be awarded randomly by the fans via a voting system during any time in the innings.
Legendary Windies batter Chris Gayle has been appointed the brand ambassador of ‘The 6IXTY’.
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