The Rule, The ICC and The Shame

The Final

Forget the overthrow that hit the bat and went for four. Forget Boult's brain freeze at the boundary when he crossed the line and gave up a six (in today's game every boundary fielder should know exactly where they are). England won the World Cup yesterday based on what might be the most ridiculous rule in the history of sports.

No one is saying it is a tainted victory, because rules are rules. But the ICC and their rules committee should be embarrassed by the way the outcome of the final of a World Cup was decided. For all those people that wrote the cheesy "Cricket was the true winner" on their twitter accounts, you missed the whole point. Cricket embarrassed itself last night.

Luckily we had two teams that displayed tremendous fight and spirit. 

Why is it the number of fours that a team has hit? Why not number of sixes or extras or singles or dot balls? Each one of those metrics is as illogical as the number of boundaries. Why not wickets after 50 overs? In which case New Zealand would have won.

In football a penalty shoot out goes on till one team wins. There would be riots in the football world if after a 5-5 penalty shoot out the cup was awarded to the team with the most corner kicks. 

The only way to truly determine a fair outcome in a sporting encounter is to play it out. The super over was created to ensure results in matches. It is an incomplete solution. 

Why not have another over with some adjustments

1) The two batsmen that bat for each team must be new and cannot be the same as the first super over

2) The bowler who bowls in the second super over has to be different from the one in the first super over

3) There are no wickets in hand. You lose a wicket and your innings in the super over comes to an end

If that is tied as well, have another over with the same rules as the second super over. 

There are probably five other logical solutions that make more sense than what the ICC Rules Committee decided to go with. Each and every one of the members of the committee needs to be questioned for not taking the time to consider what should happen if the super over ends in a tie. Lazy rule making. 

On another note, there are reports that are coming out that England should have been awarded five runs and not six for the over throw and that the on field umpire made an error. As annoying as that may be, on field errors happen in sports every day and one just has to roll with the punches. The boundary rule, however, must be deleted at the next ICC Rules meeting. 

Ten final thoughts from the ICC World Cup

- Wrong country in terms of the time of year and weather conditions to host the tournament. The fans who travelled from around the world, paid for tickets and travel, suffered the most

- Remove 'Umpires Call'. Either trust technology or trust humans, you can't be slightly pregnant

- World Cup XI- David Warner, Rohit Sharma, Kane Williamson (C), Joe Root, Shakib-Al- Hasan, Ben Stokes, Alex Carey (WK), Mitchell Starc, Jofra Archer, Lockie Ferguson, Jasprit Bumrah

- Out of the ten teams, five of them won 3 matches (or less) out of 9. Need the tournament to be more competitive

- Ian Smith and Ian Bishop- best commentators by far

- MS Dhoni has timed every move of his career to perfection. He should maintain that consistency and retire from International Cricket

- If I could play under one captain it would be Kane Williamson

- The T20 Cup is far more interesting than the ODI Cup

- Alex Carey will get a lot of bids in the next IPL Auction

- The last half hour of the cricket was more interesting than the last half hour of the tennis. While it was a great match, the quality of tennis in the 4th and 5th sets was tentative and relatively average




Photo credit https://gulfnews.com/sport/cricket/cricket-world-cup-2019-england-is-the-new-king-of-cricket-through-thriller-1.65225615