Published: Jun 20, 2013, 11:28 AM (IST)
Edited: Jun 20, 2013, 11:28 AM (IST)
In overcast conditions in London, England elected to field and bowled out South Africa for 175 in the first semi-final of the ICC Champions Trophy 2013 © Getty Images
By Sumit Chakraberty
Four out of five games played at The Oval in the ongoing ICC Champions Trophy 2013 were won by the team batting second. The only time the side batting first won the game was when Australia fell 20 runs short of Sri Lanka’s total. But that was only because they were initially trying to reach the target in 29 overs to get their net run-rate up, and lost four top order batsmen in the process. Had that been a normal game, it would have probably been a five out of five result for teams batting second at The Oval.
Critics are quick to pick on pitches in the sub-continent that crack up, where it becomes almost a matter of winning the toss and batting first to win the game. However, there hasn’t been a word of criticism for starting a game in overcast conditions in the morning in London, where the team bowling first has far too much of an advantage. At least a knock-out game like the South Africa versus England semi-final should have been a day-nighter, where the toss would have been less of a factor.
AB de Villiers and South Africa are easy targets for lampooning as chokers, but they hardly had a chance in that semi-final at The Oval once they lost the toss. James Anderson got the ball to swing prodigiously both ways, and James Tredwell too made the ball turn sharply in those moist conditions.
The South African top-order might have done better if they had been more conservative in their approach in the first half of the innings, but I don’t think that would have made a difference to the result. We saw with the ninth wicket stand of nearly a hundred at a run-a-ball between David Miller and Rory Kleinveldt how easy batting became once the sun came out and the ball stopped swinging and turning. Anything below 275 would have been easy to chase under the sun, and South Africa would only have delayed the inevitable even if they had kept wickets in hand.
Watching a seven-hour-game is no fun if the result is a foregone conclusion, and administrators should think outside the box to prevent the toss becoming too big a factor. We did have an example of that in India recently during the winter. In a One-Day International (ODI) series against England, the day-night games were advanced by a couple of hours to start at noon. That prevented an unfair advantage to the team batting second on account of the dew factor. Evidently, the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has a thing or two to learn from the sub-continent. Had the start of the day games at The Oval been delayed, they might have turned out to be fairer contests.
In Wednesday’s semi-final, therefore, the real loser was The Oval as a venue for one of the biggest games on the cricket calendar.
(Former Sunday Editor and cricket columnist of DNA, Sumit Chakraberty has been a journalist for over 30 years, with earlier stints at Indian Express, The Times of India, BiTV and UTV. He is now an independent writer and blogs on cricket at http://cricketkeeper.blogspot.in . You can also follow him on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/sumit.chakraberty and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/cricket_keeper)
