...Nope, i amn't refering to Kumar Sangakkara gesticulating to this teammates to escalate a ridiculous delivery and use it as an excuse to stop the match ... i felt it was childish, but Sanga's loyalty is towards his players and rescuing them from a bad situation ...
... Nope, i am't refering to Arun Jaitley or any of the other politicians who don't have the moral responsibility of a fiasco ... no politician in the recent past across the world has ever realized his shortcoming and owed to it, why sacrifice only Jaitley for it?
... Nope, i am't refering to the 2 teams packing off to their hotels within an hour of leaving the field ... showcasing a lack of respect for paying public will catch up, but not today ...
... The target of my ire is Match Referee AG Hurst. How can he not realize the follies of the pitch before the start of the game? If he had as much knowledge as me on the behaviours of various pitches, he can stay home and i can be the globe-trotting match referee. The second charge against him, how can you allow 23.3 overs to be bowled before you deem the match dangerous? I don't think earlier matches lasted this long. Third, did you see the ball that triggered the complaint - it was pitched in the bowler's side of the wicket. Outside the subcontinent, you would have seen the same reaction. Foruth, please see the various replays (i have seen, thanks to Indian News Channels playing it endlessly) - most of the deliveries that kicked up were from short of the length deliveries and not from length. If the bowlers have to adjust to batting paradise tracks (400 runs tracks), why can't the batsmen fed with some questions? Most of the batsmen getting hit were playing forward to a short of length delivery, not on their backfoot. Fifth, This isn't your first series in India (second actually, the previous one was also the Ind-SL 2005 series), how does this pitch behave differently to a fifth day subcontinent wicket? Sixth, show me one wicket that was from an ackward delivery: Tharanga leaving the gate open, Dilshan fishing outside off, Sanga's lazy uppish drive, Jayasuriya outfoxed with a slider and the Samaraweera's running indecision - none of them can be attributed to the pitch conditions
As like your predecessors, you will hide your imcompetent decision behind ICC's opaqueness. This match shouldn't have been called off. You should asked Sanga & Dhoni to quit whining and asked them to continue with the match. You should have told the captains that the pitches in India & the subcontinent in the 1990s weren't any different and matches were conducted fine, thank you very much.
27th December 2009 should go down in history as a watershed event in Indian cricket. It is the day when ICC rubber-stamped BCCI's move to create batting pitches. ICC & BCCI have sent clear signal to the next generation cricketers. Please become batsmen, don't contemplate about being a bowler. Matches will be called off if we don't see 300+ run ODI wickets ...
The pitch and the various players aren't blameless. However, the match should have gone on.
