England win World Twenty20 weather lottery
If World Twenty20 organisers had made a concerted effort to add an extra element of unpredictability to the competition, they couldn’t have come up with a better idea than to play it in the Caribbean during the wet season.
England can count themselves lucky that after spending two days, quite literally, at the heart of the storm at Providence Stadium, Guyana, they’ve escaped with a place in the Super Eight stage of the competition. That famed luck of the Irish, however, deserted William Porterfield’s side in the final match of Group D, with rain eventually washing out their match against England and ending their World Twenty20 chances.
England and Zimbabwe have so far bore the brunt of the ill-advised scheduling decision for the showcase tournament, with neither side completing a 20-over per side match in the group stage of the competition, while Sri Lanka, New Zealand, West Indies and Ireland have also been affected by the fickle weather.
It would have taken a particularly hard heart to have failed to muster sympathy for England if rain and the Duckworth/Lewis method had combined to prematurely end their Caribbean sojourn after their start against the West Indies in their opening group match on Monday.
In that match, England constructed a Twenty20 international innings as good as any we’ve so far seen them deliver, but rather than defending a 191-run total, Paul Collingwood’s side were forced to bowl at a West Indies batting line-up chasing a target of just 60 runs from six overs, with 10 wickets in hand, after the Duckworth/Lewis method spat out its calculations for a revised target.
Collingwood was understandably critical of the system after England’s loss, stating that "there is a major problem with Duckworth-Lewis for this form of the game," he said. "I've got no problem with it in one-day games but for Twenty20 the system has got to be changed. We played a near perfect game and lost."
West Indies captain Chris Gayle was supportive of Collingwood’s stance, despite his team emerging victorious from the match, for the simple reason that, “I could have been in that situation too. It is something we need to address so it can be even-stevens for both teams.”
As it turns out, England have weathered the storm, while Ireland’s hopes of a second consecutive Super Eight finish have been washed away. Their 70-run loss to the West Indies in the first match of Group D left Ireland with a dire net run-rate, but after restricting England to just 120 in their innings – with Dublin-born Eoin Morgan employing the odd trick shot on his way to 45 from 37 deliveries following on from his 55 from 35 against the West Indies the previous day – Ireland can feel hard done by that the inclement weather denied them the chance to chase it down.
Whatever tweaks might need to be made to the Duckworth/Lewis calculations for Twenty20 matches, and there’s merit in at least reducing number of wickets the chasing side has available relative the overs they have to chase down the revised Duckworth/Lewis target, there seems to be another obvious point worth making: why on earth would you schedule the tournament at the beginning of the Caribbean rainy season?
If the scheduling decision was made to accommodate the IPL then there is some serious prioritising to be done. Sure a wealth of overseas stars have signed with the various Indian franchise teams, but it’s not, strictly speaking, an international competition.
That honour lies with the World Twenty20, where the best international teams in the world gather to decide the pecking order. An April fixture for the tournament might have seen it played before the rain set in.
World Twenty20 organisers may not have had any control over the weather during the past two days, but they did have a say on when the tournament was held, and it was always going tempting fate to hold the competition in the Caribbean during May.
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