FAISALABAD, Oct 22: South Africa coach Mickey Arthur said on Monday that the compulsory ball change new rule will help batsmen to score at a good rate in the dying overs of limited-overs cricket internationals.

“Most definitely scores in the last 10 overs will be bigger as the ball is a lot harder and goes off the bat quicker,” Arthur told reporters.

“The ball is not reversing as much as it used to and runs are going to be a little bit more plentiful at the back end.”

The International Cricket Council has made it mandatory that the ball will be changed after 34 overs in all 50-overs-a-side internationals.

Arthur felt that the new ruling is good for the game because every team now knows when the ball is going to be changed.

“By making it a compulsory change, it’s quite good because it takes out iffiness (on when the ball is going to be changed),” Arthur said.

Pakistan batsmen capitalized on the new ruling when they scored 78 runs in the last 10 overs during the second match at Lahore on Saturday and won the match by 25 runs to level the series 1-1.

The South African coach did not expect too many changes in his team for the third game of the five-match series on Tuesday, despite losing the second game.

“We had a little stutter at Lahore, but we have set ourselves extremely high goals throughout this competition,” Arthur said. “I don’t foresee too many changes.”

South Africa has used medium-fast bowler Albie Morkel in the latter part of innings, but Arthur said it was a “lottery” for the bowlers to perform well in the slog overs.

“We have specialists who do it for us, Langeveldt has done it for a couple of years now and we’re looking for Albie Morkel to do it more for us,” said Arthur.—AP