Cape Town: The Indian Premier League will introduce new regulated strategy breaks and stiff fines for the upcoming Twenty20 tournament in South Africa in a bid to prevent games from finishing late.

IPL commissioner Lalit Modi said on Thursday that there will be a 7 1/2-minute pause in play at the halfway stage of every 20-over innings to allow the teams to discuss tactics for the remainder of the innings.

"Last year we found that 59 out of 59 games went over time by as high as 45 to 50 minutes or an hour," Modi said. "Each game was being dragged further and further and further.

"The reasons were that players were going back and forth with messages and there was a lot of strategy being decided from time to time."

Modi said the IPL decided to tighten up and impose penalties on the fielding sides if they exceed the time limits for bowling.

On the first offense, the captain will be fined $20,000. For the second offense, the entire team will get penalized $20,000 _ or $220,000 in total. At the third offense, the captain will be banned for a game and the team will get penalized $360,000.