Cricket’s integrity has been TRASHED as India receive helping hand for their T20 World Cup semi-final showdown with England, writes LAWRENCE BOOTH
- England will play India in the semi-final of the T20 World Cup on Thursday
- The weather forecast is gloomy and the match could be a complete failure
- There is no reserve day, meaning England could be out without bowling a ball
When England left Bridgetown for Georgetown at 9am on a charter flight ahead of Thursday’s World Cup semi-final against India, they did so because they were bothered by a nagging thought: maybe they’ll fly home to Britain after all. without bowling another ball.
Located in the northeastern corner of the South American mainland, near the Amazon jungle, Guyana is in the middle of the rainy season. In June it usually rains 23 days a year.
But incredibly, while the first of the semi-finals, between Afghanistan and South Africa in Trinidad, has a reserve day, the second, between England and India in Guyana, does not.
Even the allocation of an extra 250 minutes for the match against Guyana in case weather conditions intervene may not be enough to prevent an outbreak. And having finished higher than England in their Super Eight group, India would then go straight to Saturday’s final in Barbados.
As with so much else in cricket, the reason for this discrepancy comes down to the need to maximise TV audiences in South Asia. India have been locked in to host Guyana in the semi-finals since the World Cup schedule was drawn up – an arrangement no other team in the competition has been able to make.
Jos Buttler’s England are through to the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup, but may not play due to the weather
Guyana typically has 23 days of heavy rain in June, and the weather forecast is gloomy for Thursday’s semi-final
Despite there being a reserve day for the other semi-final, there is none for the England match, and Rohit Sharma’s India will go straight to the final if they fail.
The match in Trinidad starts at 8:30 PM local time, which is an ungodly 6:00 AM in India. The Guyana game, on the other hand, starts at 10am in South America – perfect for the Indian evening crowd.
And because the final doesn’t start until 48 hours later, a reserve day in Georgetown was out of the question. The simplest solution would have been to organize the final on Sunday, allowing an extra day and ensuring uniformity across the two semi-finals.
If India continues after a crisis, it will not be the fault of their cricketers. Had they, and not England, finished second in their Super Eight group, they, not England, would have been victims of the weather. Everyone has known about this arrangement for months.
But the extent to which one of the game’s showpieces has had to cave to the broadcaster’s bottom line sums up cricket’s plight: it is so dependent on a single mass market that issues of organizational integrity come a distant second.
This should come as a surprise to no one who has followed the trajectory of international cricket in recent years. Not that anyone wants to do anything about it.
When Mail Sport revealed in November that the BCCI had overruled the ICC’s independent pitch consultant Andy Atkinson and changed the pitch ahead of India’s 50-over World Cup semi-final against New Zealand in Mumbai, our story became met with the usual mix of administrative embezzlement and online abuse.
Yet it reflected the reality of global cricket: due to their enormous financial pull, India expected to get away with this subterfuge. And once the story came out, they just expected everyone else to accept it.
And so here we are again, preparing for hopelessly lopsided logistics in a World Cup semi-final. Cricket really needs to do better, but that won’t happen.