New Delhi, April 16. 
 
Fans who have become accustomed to Twenty20 matches lasting just three hours are in for a surprise during the second season of the IPL - they will now last three-and-a-quarter hours. Part of the appeal of the shortest form of the game is the non-stop action but IPL games will now take longer and there will be no action at all during the added time.

Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner, is planning to bring in a lengthy time-out - each lasting seven-and-a-half minutes - at the halfway stage of each innings.

In fact, IPL are planning to market the added time as an 'innovation' by calling it a tactical 'time out' but the fact that each innings will now come to a halt for seven-and-a-half minutes after exactly 10 overs makes it neither tactical nor, indeed, practical.

IPL Twenty20 to move out of IndiaThe primary intention is of course to generate more money from advertising. From the broadcasters' point of view, the time-outs will be split into three equal-sized chunks. One will be used to carry normal adverts, another for an extended two-and-a-half minute message of some kind (Queen Rania of Jordan is understood to have bought several slots for an improving film about the children of South Africa), and the third for miscellaneous shots from the ground: teams massing in huddles, cheerleaders dancing and so on.

Viewers also found that overs were regularly reduced to five balls, particularly when the spinners were on, because of the adverts shoehorned into the broadcast during the change of ends.

Well, amit critism of this move this could also be a risky move from Modi, as the break will affect the rhythm and dynamics of the game