Timed Game: "One More Inning"

[bsnalex]

I think this may have been discussed here in the past, but I'd like to share something we tried last weekend.

In an adult co-ed not-very-high-level-of-play one-day tournament in England last weekend, we deviated from our normal method of calling no new innings at 50 minutes and dropping a game dead at 55 minutes. Instead I asked the umpires (in agreement with managers at the start of the tourney) to announce at 40 minutes there will be one more inning played (i.e. at 40 if we were in bottom three, we'd play until end of 4 unless of course home was ahead in mid 4. If it was top 4 we'd play until 5).

I have heard that this can then minimise the stalling/delaying/stepping on home plate intentionally tactics that I for one have seen used ad nauseam at tourneys in the past. We ended up with all games finished between 50 and 60 minutes and only one ending in a tie (which would have been a tie anyway had we played 50/55).

Does anyone have any experience doing such a system and what were your feelings on it?