It’s worth pointing out that people get hit by 80mph balls in the middle of bright sunny days too.
How much of a problem is it outside of the UK? It seems to me, from my recollection, that bad light is a mostly UK thing, although rain happens everywhere.
It could happen (and be official) if the captains agree they will both declare one innings, leaving the final day with England’s second innings to try and reach the target. That would certainly be interesting, not clear to me who would be favourite which means it is at least plausible (if one team were clear favourite, then obviously the other captain would never agree to the deal). It has happened before, though I seem to recall a draw was still the final result. Can’t remember the details - was some Cronje match fixing involved as well?
I think in hotter territories clouds build up quickly, rain down hard and disappear. In the cooler UK, clouds can form and hang around for ages without moving on or raining themselves out.
It does seem there are a range of solutions for different types of delay:
Rain - as AK84 says, better drainage/pitch cover would minimise the recovery period. Everyone understands you can’t play in the rain, but it’s massivley irritating to see clear skies but still have a long wait for the field to drain/get mopped. Especially if the rain comes back before any play can be had.
Light- it seems very Route 1, but MOAR LIHGT! feels like a good a solution as any. Surround the ground with the latest LED floodlights; install your own mini-nuclear power plant if that’s what it takes to put enough power through them, outshine even the Sun, bwa-ha-ha. I am only kidding a little.
Extra time - Extra hours here and there help but given that delays happen, build in a reserve day or two to make up lost time (e.g. for any day when >60 overs are unplayed, you use a reserve day). Requires some flexibility from broadcasters and spectators but this is no worse than rigidly not showing/seeing any cricket.Without checking the forecast, if tomorrow and Wed are clear skies in Southampton, it’ll feel pretty dumb to say nothing can be done. (Obviously we can’t be flexible now because of the tight schedule, but in this scheme we’d have built the time in.)
Blockquote How much of a problem is it outside of the UK? It seems to me, from my recollection, that bad light is a mostly UK thing, although rain happens everywhere.
Bad light is an issue in a lot of places. We need to remember that India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the West Indies all routinely play in the Northern Hemisphere’s winter (so lower available daylight hours in any case) and it can get dark pretty quickly near the end of play. Famously, England won in Karachi in near night time conditions back in 2001, so it can get pretty dark quite quickly around the end of play. Bad light also a factor in NZ, particularly around the beginning and end of their season, especially for games on the South Island.
Blockquote There’s probably a very good reason for this, but why limit tests to 5 days? Why not just keep playing until it’s finished? Maybe space the tests out by a couple of extra days, and you likely complete almost all of them.
Money. Cricket used to have timeless Tests but now that they’re all televised and the series packed in together, it’s difficult to broadcast them if you don’t know when the end is, and costly to rearrange hotels and what not (not just for players but, in normal times, travelling spectators as well). England played a timeless Test in 1939 against South Africa and the match had to be declared a draw as otherwise they would have missed the boat home - England were less than 100 from victory I think, which kind of raises the question as to why they didn’t accelerate at some point. Anyway, all that kind of logistical stuff put timeless Tests away for good around that sort of time. Can’t remember when the last one was, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it were the 1939 game.
Blockquote It’s worth pointing out that people get hit by 80mph balls in the middle of bright sunny days too.
Yes, this. I am pretty certain it was fairly dangerous for Steve Smith when Archer was whizzing 90mph deliveries around his ears last year, and he’s the best batsman in the world. Also players lose sight of the ball against crowds, or in the sun, when the light is perfect but we don’t go off for it being too bright, nor because there’s a crowd in. Health and safety cannot rule everything - otherwise, we’d only let spinners bowl and, even then, the umpires would be dressed like a medieval knight in case one gets smashed back at them.
I’m also not sold on the idea that starting earlier distorts the game - the game already has loads of distortions in it that we just accept (wearing pitches making it hard to bat on day 5, atmospheric conditions rolling in that make the ball swing in the air for an hour in the middle of day 3, whatever). Ultimately, all of these things are accepted - indeed revelled in, the cliche being “that’s why it’s called Test cricket” - what should be accepted most of all though (especially in a series where Pakistan in particular have made an incredible effort to make the series happen) is that this is a branch of the entertainment industry, and, if possible, the game should be happening for the benefit of the paying punter. Particularly in England between early June and late August, the sun is up for 4/5 hours before play starts - and the grounds all have a super sopper to pick up the dew if, by chance, some still is on the field. They should have been on the pitch, imo, at 10 most mornings in this test.
Of course, having earlier described the drainage as having improved in English grounds, an overnight deluge has led to a delay this morning whilst they mop up the outfield. You couldn’t make it up. We’re one of the richest cricket nations in the world and we don’t want to cover the whole of the outfield at the end of the day. Just because it’s always been done one way doesn’t mean that
Found the details of that game in 2000 at Centurion - it did indeed come out not long after that game that a bookmaker had pressured Cronje into there being a result one way or the other, with the result that both teams declared/forfeited an innings and England ended up making a quite gettable chase, with a hungover Darren Gough hitting the winning runs with a few balls to spare.
Now, no captain would make the same mistake again as they would obviously be thoroughly investigated, so the only possible conclusion is that Root and/or Ali are on the take - if they had nothing to hide, why didn’t they go for it? 
Just a bit of batting practice for England now, nice to see them making the most of it but you really can’t learn much from this as it’s effectively a nets session and Test cricket is all about performing under pressure.
A fair way of International standard but a notable achievement nonetheless.
Am finding it hard to be sympathetic to the manifest misfortune cast by those perennially cruel gods of cricket.
That’s hilarious - only way to top that would be to change one of the dismissals to stumped, for the ‘perfect batting hat trick’ .
So it seems like flexibility has broken out: the ECB have announced that (following what it’s trying to paint as fairly detailed negotiations) play in the next test will be permitted to start a whole 30 minutes early if time has been lost the previous day.
Following positive discussions with the England & Wales Cricket Board, (ECB) the International Cricket Council (ICC), led by Match Referee Chris Broad and various stakeholders including broadcast partners, the ECB and the ICC have agreed to revised start times ahead of the #raisethebat third Test starting on Friday at the Ageas Bowl.
The flexible approach will enable the prospect of making up time for inclement weather during the morning session of subsequent days rather than at the end of the day.
The match officials will ensure that light is monitored to maximise playing time while it is still safe to do so. The safety of the players is still the number one priority for this protocol.
The revised start times have been agreed with the captains and coaches of both England and Pakistan and will be implemented for the final match of this series.
Further consideration will be given to applying these changes further at future series played in England.
The line about the match officials ensuring light is monitored to maximise playing team seems like a rather diplomatic summary of the conversation.
Revised Playing Times Due to Bad Weather
- After the conclusion of play on day one, the ICC Match Referee, Groundstaff and the ECB Match Manager will meet to discuss the start times for the next day.
- If the forecast looks good in the morning, it will be an option to commence play at 10.30am and that final decision will be made by the ICC Match Referee, Chris Broad.
- The Match Referee will confirm the revised playing times, with the most likely scenario of amending to:
- 10.30am start with 98 overs to be bowled in the day
- 6.00pm scheduled close of play
- 6.30pm extra 30 mins to bowl overs
- 7.00pm cut off for extra time for bad weather during the day
- The morning session would last two and a half hours if the start time was adjusted.
The best thing about this is that it vastly increases the chances of there being no need for it, because fate is fickle like that. Let’s hope it continues to develop long-term though rather than being abandoned if that proves to be the case.
Nice evenly posied start, 30/1. Question for our English types, whats the issue with Rory Burns, he seems to be completely at sea versus Shaheen Afridi, its like 3/4 times this series he had fallen to him.
Is the cupboard post-Cook that bare
(Some kid socred big in County a few days back, surely he’d be better than Burns).
We literally tried everyone in county cricket (Trott, Robson, Lyth, Jennings, Roy and there must be others I have forgotten) before we got to Burns. When he came into the team, he was the only English qualified batsman to have scored 1000 runs per county season for the previous 5 years and had an average of 45 or so in first class cricket.
He’s had a bad summer though. It’s one thing being made Shaheen’s bunny - I doubt he will be the first, Shaheen is that good - but he wasn’t great v the Windies either and kept getting out to Roston Chase too. Crawley opens for Kent - and is obviously at 3 at the moment - and he’s looking like he’s got far more idea than Burns. Long term, it could be Burns goes and they look to bump Crawley up, then find a three (there’s a couple more contenders at 3 who haven’t been tried, whereas at opener we really have cycled through almost everyone of potential quality).
It seems to me that for about the last 30 years, England have been blessed with a succession of world-class openers (Gooch, Atherton, Stewart, Trescothick, Vaughan, Strauss, Cook), many of whom have overlapped with another. As such, even when one of these has not been playing, another generally has, and sometimes they have found a competent lieutentant - even if not, there has been a decent chance of at least one of our openers getting a score. So maybe it’s not surprising that at the moment, we don’t have anyone world-class at that position and are therefore struggling to fill both slots. The worry is, as we have discussed ad nauseam, that if red ball cricket continues to decline at the expense of white ball, we may never see the likes of that list again. I suppose the only consolation is that that’s an issue for all Test-playing nations.
When you lose a review with the ball hitting 3/4s of the way up middle stump, I reckon you should lose your match fee.
Good idea. Maybe take 25% off the guy at the other end, too!
As an aside I am a fan of the 3 reviews rule, at least it gets rid of most match changing egregious mistakes.
Yasir Shah was pretty much declared finished earlier this year, as surplus in the post UAE Pakistan era. Looks like that was premature. At least until Shaheen and Naseem develop into the finished product.
Any young spinners on the conveyor belt that gave us Qadir, Mushtaq, Saqlain, Yasir? Always handy to have someone around.
I was mildly surprised that they didn’t bowl Shadab more in the first Test and he’s not been picked since…
They seem to have returned to a fast bowling based attack for the past couple of years and especially since we have returned to play at home. Besides Shaheen and Naseem, there is Muhammad Husnain and Muhammad Musa (both in the squad)
Best spinner is probably Nauman Ali, but he is actually older than Yasir. Khalid Bhatti is like him another slow left armer and he is in the squad, but he is also over 30.
I guess you can still get a good 6-7 years out of a 30 year old spinner though (and Yasir isn’t finished yet,I would say), so there’s probably no real rush.
Meanwhile, of course, we’re persisting with someone in his early 20s who’s going at 40+ for the summer…
That was Misbah’s (the Captain) belief. He brought in lots of journeymen whom he thought could get a good couple of season out of, Ajmal, Zulfiqar Babar, Abdur Rehman, even Yasir was 27 when he broke in.
Misbah the Head Coach seems to be going elsewhere.