ICC World Cup 2019 | Reserve days would be logistical nightmare, says Gary Stead
New Zealand head coach Gary Stead has stated that reserve days would be a nightmare for the World Cup, given the fact that as many as four matches have ended in no result due to persistent rainfall. The encounter between India and New Zealand at Trent Bridge on Thursday too was called off.
The ICC (International Cricket Council) has received a lot of flak from the fans as the encounter between India and New Zealand on Thursday was the third game to end up without a single ball being bowled while the match between West Indies and South Africa was called off after 7.3 overs. However, ICC CEO Dave Richardson had stated that having a reserve day for every league match was not possible as it would result in logistical nightmares and even New Zealand coach Gary Stead echoed with his thoughts.
“Reserve days, I think, is going to be a logistical nightmare. The ICC, I think, have made that fairly well-known. Unfortunately, it’s a bit of an anomaly already. When you look at the amount of days we’ve lost already, I think it’s the biggest sort of amount of days lost in a World Cup ever,” he said, reported PTI.
A downpour of this nature is unlikely during the English summer and Stead felt that everyone is helpless about it.
“So, we can’t do much about that. We just have to, I guess, push on with what the schedule is. If you took the UK summer from last year, then I am not sure it did rain at all from the sound of things. It’s a bit of bad luck really. It can rain anywhere in the world. My first tour was in Dubai, and it rained there in the desert, and I never thought it was going to rain there either. So I don’t think we can really help that,” he expressed.
The former New Zealand cricketer was disappointed to not play against India but suggested the team to be prepared for the game against South Africa on June 19.
“Yeah, it would have been lovely to play India. It’s always tough mentally, I think on a day like this, when you come down prepared to play, and it doesn’t happen. But it’s out of our control. We can’t really do much about it, so we’ve got to move on quickly for South Africa,” said the 47-year-old.
India fielding coach R Sridhar also felt that it is not right to blame the governing body for the cancelled matches and was confident that the technical committee will take the right call.
“Oh, there’s a big technical committee from the ICC on that. It depends on the format, the time available. We don’t have any days off in this tournament. Every day there is a game. So there is hardly an opportunity to have a reserve day. I don’t know the technical aspect of it. The ICC will decide that. It’s not for me to take that call.
“It’s uncontrollable, isn’t it? You really can’t control the weather, so we have had two good games. We came here looking forward to third good one, but unfortunately, we can’t control the weather. I went on the ground. It was almost like a skating rink. So it would put too much risk on the players to play on there, especially at the early phase of the tournament,” Sridhar explained.
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