Tragedy of World Cricket

The cricket world is facing its worst match scheduling and time management. I don’t know why the ICC had scheduled ICC Champion Trophy 2013 as it is commonly known that it rains in England during this part of year. Adding bitterness to this ICC did not planed reserve day facility for this tournament not even for knockouts and final match. A shameful thing that last ICC Champions Trophy’s 50 overs final had been reduced to 20 overs each just because of shortsightedness of ICC officials to keep a reserve day for match. During such prestigious tournament no one wants the matches to be rained of. This is not first time that any final match had been affected by rain, 2002 Champions Trophy was still remembered due to same tragedy but that time instead of having reserved day the championship had to be shared between India and Sri Lanka because unfortunately it rained on both days.

Then BCCI comes with an excuse that teams are having tight schedule. India, Sri Lanka and West Indies needs to travel to West Indies where they will play a tri-series starting in four days after Champions Trophy, so it became difficult to go with reserve day. This is not good enough excuse because Champions Trophy is an ICC event and washout in such event results loss to commercial business and spectators. But what about the disappointment of cricket fans those are expecting entertainment and feeling excited for their supporting team. Nobody was expecting such final match of Champions Trophy.

I don’t think that 20 overs are sufficient for deciding champions for such tournaments and who knows that 50 overs knockouts may gave different champions to the world. The supporting incident for my this comment is rain affected match in which West Indies losses in D/L applied match as result of which South Africa qualified for semifinals of ICC Champions Trophy 2013. South Africa again repeats their disappointing chocking performance in knockouts which results into one sided semifinal. So if that match was played with reserved day then the equations might be different, so was the champions.

Currently India, Sri Lanka and West Indies tri-series is going in which initial matches were already been affected by rain. But good thing is that reserve days are scheduled for this series. If ICC could bring in Hawk eye, UDRS (Umpire Decision Review System) and all the other facilities, then why should they not make reserve day official. I think that tournament knockouts must be played with reserve day facility.

So what a tragedy, ICC Champions Trophy final had been played without reserved day and league matches in tri-series are played with reserved days….!