Sehwag in action against Sri Lanka. (AFP)

IPL-3: A cellphone advertisement featuring opening partners Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir is telecast between deliveries in the final over of a close match.

Dambulla tri-series: A giant animated cricket ball appears in the middle of the pitch while a bowler marks his run-up and commentators discuss tactics.

The intrusive advertisements that got the city cricket fan’s goat more than the brittle Indian batting during the tournament in Sri Lanka are not going to spoil the experience of watching the World Cup next year.

“The International Cricket Council (ICC) does not allow ads to be telecast between deliveries in an over and the World Cup is an ICC event,” said a spokesperson for ESPN-Star Sports, which has bagged the TV rights for the 2011 tournament.

Officials of Ten Sports, which telecast the recent tri-series, were not available for comment but sources said the Sri Lankan cricket board had allowed advertisements to be telecast between deliveries.

“There’s a flow to a match. If an animated advertisement jumps up from the field of play while you are observing the field placement or trying to guess who will come on to bowl, then you just lose that flow,” said Debabrata Bhaduri, a budding spinner.

The 16-year-old’s coach and former India opener Devang Gandhi too feels that ads between overs are distracting. According to him, there already is an overdose of ads, with the picture window being regularly shrunk to accommodate ads but “they have to draw the line somewhere”.

“Ads have slowly increased over the years but showing ads covering the whole screen between deliveries is really too much. Something like that is okay for the IPL — and that’s where it started — but certainly not in international matches,” said Gandhi.

Vancouver-based economics professor Subhadip Ghosh, who is in the city on vacation, was “disgusted” by ads between deliveries. “The ads and the performance of our middle order in the final made me switch off the TV,” said the 35-year-old.

Allan Collaco, the secretary-general of the Advertising Standards Council of India, told Metro from Mumbai that it had received a complaint from a viewer about an ad that was being shown between deliveries.