- England are set to play India in the T20 World Cup semi-finals on Thursday
- The weather forecast is bleak, and the game could be a complete washout
- There is no reserve day, meaning England could be out without bowling a ball
As England left Bridgetown for Georgetown on a 9am charter flight ahead of Thursday’s World Cup semi-final against India, they did so troubled by a nagging thought: they may yet be flying home to the UK without bowling another ball.
Guyana, located in the north-east corner of the South American mainland near the Amazon jungle, is deep into its wet season, with the month of June typically experiencing 23 days of heavy rain.
Yet, 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 allowance of an extra 250 minutes for the Guyana game in case the weather intervenes may not be enough to prevent a washout. And because they finished higher in their Super Eight group than England, India would then advance directly to Saturday’s final in Barbados.
As with so much else in cricket, the reason for this discrepancy boils down to the need to maximise the TV audience in South Asia. India have been billeted for the Guyana semi-final ever since the World Cup schedule was drawn up – a pre-arrangement not afforded any other team in the competition.
The Trinidad game starts at 8.30pm local time, which is an ungodly 6am in India. The Guyana game, on the other hand, begins at 10am in South America – perfect for India’s evening audience.
And because the final starts only 48 hours later, a reserve day in Georgetown was out of the question. The simplest solution would have been to stage the final on Sunday, allowing an extra day, and ensuring uniformity across the two semi-finals.
If India go through after a washout, it won’t be the fault of their cricketers. Had they, not England, finished second in their Super Eight group, then they, not England, would have been the victims of the weather. Everyone has known of this arrangement for months.
But the extent to which one of the game’s showpiece events has had to kowtow to broadcasting’s bottom line sums up cricket’s plight: it is so over-reliant on a single mass market that matters of organisational integrity come a distant second.
This should come as a surprise to no one who has watched international cricket’s direction of travel 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 was met with the usual mix of administrative obfuscation and online abuse.
Yet it reflected the reality of world cricket: because of their huge financial pulling power, India expected to get away with the subterfuge. And once the story came out, they simply expected everyone else to accept it.
And so here we are again, preparing for hopelessly lopsided logistics at the semi-final stage of a World Cup. Cricket really must do better – but it won’t.