Inept ICC strike back yet again with their ignorance

Well, clearly, by the looks of things, I’m not the greatest judge out there. Clearly, my perception of the ICC was completely wrong and I underestimated their propensity to keep mucking up over and over again. Because, here we are, once again, having to debate over a dozy decision that they took - or rather, did not take - ahead of a major ICC Tournament.

That looks like a fair argument - until you take a look at the actual schedule. Once you do, this statement looks like nothing but a terrible attempt from the ICC to cover up their ignorance, arrogance and short-sightedness. The original schedule has both the semi-finals to be played on March 5 in Sydney, after which the teams will travel to Melbourne to play the final on March 8. 

You can understand, though. Adding a reserve day for the semi-finals to extend a global event that occurs once every two years must be such a difficult decision to take, right? I’m sure the teams would rather see games get washed off and be decided by intangibles than actually going out, playing and getting a result. But the funny thing is how all this ‘not feasible’ argument went out of the window during the 2019 World Cup. There, the semis were played on two different days, rather than the one here, and just like this tournament, there was just a three-day gap between the second semi-final and the final. And to make things worse, it was a 50-over contest. Yet, they somehow found it ‘feasible’ to arrange a reserve day. 

In fact, there is more. "There is a clear and fair alternative should there be no play in any of the semi-finals with the winner of the group progressing," is also what the spokesperson said.  Right, who knew that deciding finalists based on who did well in the group stages - which was also affected by rain - would be a fairer than just having the teams involved actually compete in the middle and get a result.  

This begs the question: how difficult is it for the authorities involved to think through the ifs and what-ifs involved and come up with feasible solutions for the same before the plan is actually finalized? With the boundary countback rule, at least, there were a lot of complexities involved - the probability of it actually happening in the first place was very less and since it was an actual rule, it either needed to be re-written or scrapped. Here, though, the solution was pretty straightforward: all they needed to do was schedule a goddamn reserve day (that was very much feasible in the original schedule). Yet, thanks to the council’s incompetency and ineptness, here we are.  

It is pretty easy for the authorities to give naive, ignorant, bland statements like the one above to justify their blunder but at the end of the day, it’s the players who are the real victims. Imagine working hard for years, day in and day out, giving your everything on the field, fighting your way through heartbreaks and busting your backside out to just to be screwed over by inconsiderate people who are more determined to cover up their mistakes than make an actual change.