March 2009

[Sweder]

I've just watched open mouthed as the West Indies cricket team, by seeking to win the first One Day International against England on a technicality, shot themselves in their collective feet.

With the option to stay out in the middle and win the match the Windies batsmen looked desparately to the umpires as dusk crept up on the ground. The scoreboard ticked over, as did the preposterously complex Duckworth Lewis total. Duckworth/ Lewis (D/L) is the system devised for calculating a comparable score should a one-day match be truncated by weather. I don't pretend to understand how it all works but it's based on wickets lost versus runs scored after each over bowled. So, after 46 overs with seven wickets down the Windies needed to have exceeded a given 'par' score if/ when the match ended, in this case due to bad light. I know how dreadfully tedious this all is for non-believers but please; bear with me. It's not enough for the light to be bad; the umpires, on deciding the light is of poor quality, then offer the batting side the option to leave the field. This can be until the light improves (when the umpires can bring the teams back on to the field), but with nights' dark cloak descending on the stadium this was never an option here. If behind the rate the batsmen would elect to stay out until either they'd exceeded the needed D/L score or, preferably, won the match outright.

With lengthening shadows softly merging across the pitch the umpires took another light meter reading. Finding the the result suitably low they offered the Windies the option to leave the field. The batsmen looked to their coaching team in the stands who, as one, clutching their D/L calculation sheets, confidently beckoned the players to come in. But as the batsmen walked towards the pavilion the England players, far from trudging off with heads hung low, grinned wolfishly at one another as they too made for the pavilion, slapping one another on the back and waving at their own dressing room. For they knew what the match referee would confirm after ten minutes of farcical paper rustling, bemused chin stroking and multiple teapot poses; the Windies management under the tutelage of John Dyson, their Australian coach, had got it horribly wrong; England had in fact won, under the D/L method, by a single run.

The whys and wherefores will no doubt emerge as the media hook their talons into the bloody carcass of this righteous farce. For me it's a sad inditement of a team trying to win on a technicality when they had an option to stay on the field and win the game through good old-fashioned sweaty determination and sporting endeavour. Live by the calculator, die by the calculator. I'd take the option of dying with my boots on every time.

Or, more appropriately, with my bat in my hand.