da betcris： Reaction from the second ODI between England and New Zealand
da betano casino： Will Luke at Edgbaston18-Jun-2008
Brendon McCullum looks aghast as the umpires inform him the chase is off © Getty Images
New Zealand had Brendon McCullum and Scott Styris at the crease, andonly needed a further seven runs in the 20th over to win. The matchwas theirs for the taking, provided they didn’t lose any furtherwickets, and the series would have been levelled. But at 7.25pm, sixballs away from ensuring a result for either side, the umpires gave into the lashing rain at Edgbaston. New Zealand were well and trulyrobbed, as were a hardy and patient crowd of 16,000.”It’s a game we would have won if we’d played all the overs,” DanielVettori, the New Zealand captain, said, “or even got that 20th over,so there’s a sense of disappointment in the dressing room. It’s almostlike a loss.”Fortune generally favours the brave, but not on this occasion. New Zealand desperately needed a slice of luck, a break – anything to get their tour back on track after losing the Test series, and receiving a whipping in both the Twenty20 and first ODI. Despiteoutplaying England, today it was not to be, thanks to the most anal ofregulations. Rain and poor light had prevented play from startinguntil 3pm, but even so, it was decided they would take a 30-minuteinterval in between innings, in spite of the awful weather forecastdue and the excellent light the ground was enjoying at that precisetime.”It’s just one of those common-sense solutions [that was needed],”Vettori said. “We bowled one allotment of 13 overs and one of 11, soit wasn’t like we were tired or anything. It could have been reducedto ten minutes and we’d have gone straight back out there,[especially] with that knowledge of what weather was coming. If youcan take the common-sense approach to most things, they normally getsorted out.”In addition to the interval, England were themselves a little slow intaking nearly an hour to bowl 13 overs, further hampering the game’sprogress, and Vettori was quick to emphasise the umpires’responsibility. “There were a lot of stoppages. Some were necessary,some were not. I’ve played for a long, long time and never been finedfor a slow over-rate. If some people can do it, then I think youshould push the case through.”It’s all too easy to blame the umpires on occasions like these, butthere was undoubted gamesmanship from England that could easily havebeen nipped in the bud by Steve Davis and Ian Gould. A stray plasticbag seemed to take an age to be removed, while England’s oddlyenthusiastic fielding changes appeared to take place after nearlyevery delivery. Responding to their tardy over-rate, Paul Collingwoodinsisted that there was no foul play from England or dirty tacticsinvolved.”It wasn’t a tactical thing or anything like that,” he said,pointedly. “I guess we were chasing the ball a little bit at times.That happens, and you’re not going to get through your overs as quick.It wasn’t tactical and I didn’t realise it was that slow. I waswatching the Duckworth-Lewis all the time and we were there orthereabouts. We were only one wicket away from clinching it really, soit was going down to the wire.”Like Vettori, though, Collingwood blamed the no-result on the fattenedinterval between innings. “That’s probably the disappointment of the day actually,” he said.”When you’ve got a shortened game like that, to have a 30-minute breakbetween innings surprised us a bit, to be honest. We were ready to goout in 10 or 15 minutes.”It’s a shame that it was 30 but it’s in the regulations and we can’tchange it. It needs to be looked at, because we’d all had lunch beforethe game had started, so there was nothing to do between innings.”I can understand [the crowd] getting frustrated when it goes down tothe wire. It’s in the rules and regulations so there’s nothing we can doas players, but I do believe it’s something that has to be looked out.We could have gone out there in 10 or 15 minutes; from a player’spoint of view, we were ready to go.”In the current climate, it is unfortunate timing for 50-over cricketto be made to look so foolish. Its younger, hip cousin has it allwrapped up in half the time, after all. Cricket’s regulations areoften its Achilles heel, and in times like these, when the landscapeis changing so quickly, common sense simply must prevail. One-daycricket remains a huge income stream for boards, but its dissenterswill be quietly chuckling at the archaic regulations that were playedout so perfectly today.
