Monday Sports News

Test not abandoned yet despite rain 
No play for the second consecutive day 
Azad Majumder 
 

Rain has washed out play for the second consecutive day in the second and final Test between Bangladesh and New Zealand at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium on Sunday.
  The match is scheduled to start at 9:00am on Day Three if the weather permits, but the possibility of making up for lost time is unlikely with heavy showers forecast until Monday.
  It means the rain will have the final say in this match, though the umpires were not ready to give up.
  ‘There could be play on any of the five days, so there will be no decision of calling the match off until the fifth day. If the conditions are so bad on the fifth day that we could not start the match then it would be abandoned,’ said umpire Daryl Harper.
  ‘But at this stage we are hoping for some finer weather and hoping some play before that comes round,’ said the 57-year-old Australian.
  ‘The pitch is being covered for the last 72 hours, so we don’t know what is underneath. That is the most important area we have to look at, you know. We have to inspect it first and then we will take our decision about what to do,’ added another umpire Asoka de Silva.
  Neither Bangladesh nor New Zealand did turn up at the stadium and the umpires too went there only at 11:30am. After having a simple look at the ground which was still being drenched by the rain water, they decided to call off the day’s play.
  It left the few BCB staff and media personnel, who defied the poor weather to be at the stadium, guessing over the fate of the game, but the statement of the umpires allayed their fears.
  Umpire Harper said he has personal reason to start the game as it is his 75th Test match as an umpire.
  ‘I was never ever involved in a game when all five days were washed out. And my briefest Test was a one-and-half-day one in Madras a couple of years ago (between India and Sri Lanka). I am very keen to start this game, because this Test is my number 75 and I don’t want to miss out on it (laughs),’ he said.
  Cricket experts said the game will be treated as a draw if there is a toss at least, otherwise it will go down in cricket history as one of the very rare abandoned Test matches.
  Of the 1888 Test matches played so far, only seven had been abandoned completely. The last time a Test match was totally abandoned was in 1998, also involving New Zealand against India at Carisbrook in Dunedin.
  Test cricket has seen a result in two days 19 times, so the experts said the game is not yet dead and an outcome is still possible even if they can start the play on the fourth day.
  If the teams forfeit an innings or declare an innings on nought by mutual consent like what South Africa and England did at Centurion in 2000, a result is possible even on the fifth day, they said.
  In that game at Centurion, South Africa, who had already won the five-match series, ended the Day One on 155-6, but the next three days were rained off. On the fifth day when the play resumed the then England captain Naser Hussain took an initiative to bring some life into the game and asked his counterpart Hanse Cronje to forfeit an innings by each side.
  After South Africa finished their first innings on 248, England came out to bat and declared their innings without scoring any run and South Africa also forfeited their second innings setting a victory target of 249 runs for the visitors.
  England won the game by two wickets. A similar move can give the ongoing Test some life, provided there is some play possible on the fifth day. Cricket analysts, however, said that kind of move is unlikely here as New Zealand already lead the series.