It has been a busy week for cricket’s legislators. After the opening match of the NatWest Series at the Riverside on Sunday, MCC was moved to discuss the legality of Kevin Pietersen’s innovative switch-hitting against New Zealand. Now the second game in the series, the match abandoned amid farcical scenes at Edgbaston on Wednesday, has forced the ICC to amend its regulation governing the length of intervals in rain-affected one-day matches.

During the game at Edgbaston, the players were instructed to take a 30-minute break between innings, despite the loss of more than four hours’ play to rain and the willingness of both teams to resume after ten or 15 minutes. The umpires, Steve Davis and Ian Gould, had merely applied an inflexible ICC playing condition correctly. But for the remaining three matches in the series, the umpires, in conjunction with the captains, will have the discretion to limit the interval to as little as ten minutes. The temporary amendment to playing condition 15.1 is likely to become permanent when the ICC chief executives’ committee meets in Dubai at the end of the month.

The issue was brought into sharp focus at Edgbaston as the game was rained off after 19 overs of New Zealand’s innings, when only one more would have brought about a result. The extra time used unnecessarily at the interval suddenly seemed to have prevented a positive result.

Both captains, Paul Collingwood and Daniel Vettori, had called for the regulation to be reexamined and yesterday David Collier and Justin Vaughan, the chief executives of the ECB and New Zealand Cricket, contacted the ICC to suggest introducing greater flexibility. David Richardson, the acting chief executive of the ICC, then discussed the matter with Davis, Gould and Javagal Srinath, the match referee at Edgbaston, and immediately authorised the amendment.

The new version mirrors the equivalent section of the ECB’s playing conditions for domestic 50-overs matches, which also gives umpires and captains the power to reduce the interval to ten minutes.

After the game at Edgbaston, Vettori suggested that England had contributed to the unsatisfactory conclusion by indulging in “gamesmanship” to slow their overrate. Srinath cleared England of bowling their overs too slowly and Peter Moores, the England head coach, defended his side. “What I don’t like is people saying we didn’t want to play,” Moores said. “We are playing good cricket at the moment, we are happy to get stuck in, we wanted to play and get 2-0 up in the series. There were some stoppages that were out of Paul Collingwood’s control, but we were bowling within the time frame required.”

The teams meet again tomorrow in the third one-day international in Bristol. England are hoping to give a fitness test today to Ryan Sidebottom, who was ruled out of the game at Edgbaston with a back spasm. Sidebottom has been given an antiinflammatory injection to treat the problem, which he first experienced a week ago when he missed the Twenty20 international against New Zealand at Old Trafford.

“It is related to the spasm he had at Old Trafford,” Moores said. “That settled down to a degree, but left some inflammation that we want to get rid of.” Alastair Cook, who has yet to appear in the one-day series, has also had an injection in an injured shoulder and should be fit for the final two matches of the series, at the Brit Oval on Wednesday and at Lord’s tomorrow week.