A tie in cricket is a situation when two teams at the end of their innings finish on the same score. To decide the winner of the match various methods have been used previously. While the current rules decide the winner based on a Super Over, another mode used previously was a bowl-out or bowl-off.
The rules of bowl-out are as easy as it gets. Each team chooses five bowlers who have to bowl and hit the stumps without any batter at the striker’s end. The bowlers from both teams alternate their turns to have a go at the stumps. A succesful hit at the stumps is worth one point and no points are awarded for a miss. After both teams finish five turns, the score is tallied and the team with the highest score wins. If the score is tied at 5-5, the bowl-out continues until one of the team eventually misses.
The International Cricket Council introduced the bowl-out rule for the 2006 Champions Trophy and the 2007 World Cup. However, none of the matches in both these tournaments ended in a tie and a bowl-out was never seen. The first bowl-out was officially seen in international cricket in 2006. After a T20 match between New Zealand and West Indies ended in a tie, a bowl-off was played in which the Kiwis eventually triumphed 3-0. A year later, India and Pakistan played a bowl-out in the 2007 T20 World Cup. India won the bowl-out 3-0.
Bowl-out was soon eliminated by the ICC and was replaced by the Super Over. The bowl-out only focused on the bowling abilities of the players in a sport where the batters play a major role. This was one of the reasons why it was scraped off from the international scenario. Today, some forms of domestic cricket still employ the bowl-out in tied matches or the ones that are called off due to rain.
