I can’t watch cricket again….
The events surrounding the Cricket world cup final have left a nasty bitter taste in my mouth, so much so I feel like the love for the sport has been lost on me forever.
The events surrounding that final just reek of a sport that is struggling to evolve into the 21st Century. How can a sport played in so many countries around the world be so far behind with technology it makes errors on a regular basis that have a huge detrimental effect on those affected team’s abilities to win fairly? It makes the results of this sport appear to be more of a lottery than be about actual skill which therein lies a huge major problem.
The fact that the recent world cup final had a host of errors in it that actually affected the result does not paint the sport in a positive light, not only were there countless LBW decisions that should never have been given out, and due to a seemingly futile immature rule that batsman are responsible for all subsequent erroneous LBW decisions made by the umpires due to using their only review that can actually be taken off them for 50/50 decisions like ‘Umpires call” the umpires absolved themselves of all responsibility for these ridiculous decisions that get sugar coated over for just being “part of the game” and that they “all even out eventually” and ofcourse the teams are just “unlucky” which are all the clichés used when people want to justify umpiring decisions that go their way and go against the opposition. A few good examples of these were the Roy and Taylor decisions where because there were no reviews left for these two sides, the umpires are almost given free rein to blame these events on the sides that have used their reviews, instead of taking accountability for their actions. This has made cricket unique in that bad errors or decisions are just swept under the carpet as being part of the game when most sports have processes in place to at least attempt to stamp these basic errors out (even if they don’t get these decisions always correct, they have a process that allows the decision to be checked or reviewed).
The fact that a World Cup final can have such poor officiating which has resulted in quite possibly the wrong team being awarded the trophy which has painted the sport in such a negative light that I actually don’t think the fans realise just how much irreparable damage was done to not only the ICC brand but cricket in general. The game is most definitely not the greatest ODI game of all time, or cricket game of all time, it was a game to forget, it was an embarrassment for the sport and will be seen that way for decades to come.
Some of the key decisions that were wrong were unforgivable, especially the team being on the losing side who will always feel robbed, almost as though all the stars, ICC, and everything else aligned to ensure New Zealand were never given World Champion status, even when the two sides couldn’t be decided on the field, rather than the World cup being awarded to both sides, an arbitrary rule no one had even heard of, and I doubt any of the players had ever prepared for decided the fate of these two sides, one was declared World Champions for tieing the final, another was declared runner up despite having taken more wickets (Which wickets is something shown on the actual final score card). Plenty of arguments to say that the chasing team will always lose more wickets, but usually the chasing team will always score more boundaries too seeing they are chasing so that argument holds very little weight, it was a massive oversight by the ICC to determine a winner in such a bizarre, ridiculous, ill-thought-out way, under this situation where another super over is not to be played then the World Cup should have been declared dual winners with England and New Zealand sharing the cup, it was not, now all the doubters can happily throw an asterix next to England’s name and rightfully point out that they did not WIN that final but they tied it and also tied the super over which should have been used to determine a clear winner. The fact they didn’t replay another sudden death super over, and another, just added to the ridiculousness of them determining the world cup winner. Given the game was over 7 hrs long and it was a world cup final I can guarantee that every TV station was only getting their viewing ratings figures from this particular game and if they had to keep it on for another hour whilst the teams battled it out in sudden death, super over after super over, to determine a rightful clear winner then I doubt any of those TV stations would have complained that this game went over its allotted time slot. Considering reruns of whatever episodes of terrible outdated TV was scheduled to come on straight after the match, or it would have just used up most of the post-game analysis time slot that most TV stations had allocated for the post match anyway despite all that its not a valid excuse for the ICC to use when it is a World Cup FINAL.
The over throws, what can we say about it? it literally cost New Zealand the world cup final. We can all pretend that Rashid could have hit a 4 or 6 to win England the world cup if he was forced on strike to face Boult in those last 2 balls which should have been the case with the over throw rule, but we will never know, because New Zealand were unfairly forced to bowl to Stokes who had already benefitted by what should have been 5 runs added to the score sheet for a standard hit to the boundary that resulted in overthrows from Stokes bat, but instead the umpires all erroneously ruled it incorrectly that it was 6 runs to stand and that Stokes was to face the next 2 balls which forced a super over. The umpire is now trying to deflect all responsibility for that decision by claiming that he has the support of the ICC and that there are too many things to look at, boohoo, it cost a team a World Cup trophy and he is playing it down like a standard error of judgement that just so happens in cricket, the same umpires checked Boult's foot on the boundary the over before but in the most important decision that they will ever probably have to make they decided that this was not worthy of being checked by the Television umpire (Funny how they all knew that rule about whether they were allowed to check it or not with the Television official and thought they were correct on that ruling, which is written ambiguously anyway so most likely could have been checked, but actually got the overthrow rule wrong which cost the other team their chance at World Cup glory) a team is left without a world cup trophy and whether they are the nice guys of cricket or not when this blows over the history books are going to say that England won the world cup, no mention will be made of New Zealand’s gracious way they took this tie on the chin and accepted the result. New Zealand don’t have any choice but to accept it. New Zealand is not a part of the big 3 ICC members who establish the rules of the sport and have the overall say in how the sport is run, New Zealand has no power or influence over the administration to do anything about this result, literally there only avenue to stay an ICC member is to take the loss on the chin and move on, had this result happened to England/ Australia or India, their influence over the ICC by being one of the 3 members that run the ICC governing body would have a huge influence or bearing over what would happen moving forward from this. Being a tiny nation of a few million people and having no real media to speak of and no influence over the ICC they are stuck in silence having to accept the result, which has sent shockwaves through New Zealand sporting fans and ruined cricket as a spectacle for a lot of them to the point some of them may never, or will never watch the sport again. The heartache is just too much to bear after watching the final moments unfold and then the subsequent world-wide media just brushing it off as ‘Bad luck” rather than take the ICC to account over it just puts that final nail in the coffin for a lot of them. Even die hard cricket fans in New Zealand are finding life very tough to move forward and feel like giving up on the sport.
Which then leaves me to the rest of us cricket fans who witnessed the final, a bitter horrible taste is left wailing in my mouth, and it’s not the taste of England winning (Who I was actually going for prior to the tournament and throughout) it’s the taste of a sport that hasn’t moved forward over decades and decades when technology has been available the whole time to not only improve it from a spectator level, but the technology has been there to hopefully get rid of the bad ridiculous errors that can cost teams in the most critically important matches that they will ever face, where there is much more to the result that just writing off another Bilateral series, where world cup knockout matches are involved needing the very best of technology to ensure the correct, rightful and fair decisions are made always to benefit of and to confirm the integrity of the sport of Cricket. Instead we are left to a sport where an umpire error is accepted when that single run meant the difference between a world cup title being awarded to a team and the other being on the losers end of history. When an incorrect LBW call can ruin a batting sides chances of winning and then be dismissed as sour grapes because they used their one and only review that may have been taken off them for a 50/50 coin flip call like “Umpires call” the sport is in grave danger of being relegated to a joke with fans walking away in droves. A lot of neutrals will struggle to come back to the sport after that result, 6 weeks in the making to determine a winner that didn’t even win? You will be hard pressed to find fans outside of the subcontinent that have the patience for a sport that wraps itself in cotton wool like this. I know personally there are a lot of people who watched and witnessed the events of the final who will never watch a cricket game again, and if this is what the “greatest game of all time” does for the fans then cricket has an even bigger problem than it realises.
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