The much-anticipated event, the ICC test championship final, is currently underway at Southampton, England. Both India and New Zealand face each other in this one-off test to be crowned as the inaugural World test Champions.
Before the start of this final, there were talks about a possible situation where the match may be affected due to rain. Unfortunately, the same threat has arrived.
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ICC WTC Final 2021
This one-off test was scheduled for June 18-22. However, ICC also has kept June 23 as the reserve day if the match gets affected by rain. But the question arises that when ICC knew the month of June in the UK brings a lot of rain, why they went ahead with the plan to conduct the match in England!! A lot of questions have been raised by Cricket greats for this decision of ICC.
In the 4 days so far, the first and 4th day has been a complete washout, and in the other two days, a total of only 141.1 overs has been bowled.
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With just 2 more days left, it is improbable that the final will see a single winner. The weather forecast also looks grim, and the remaining days may also see play getting affected due to rain and bad light. In such a case, sharing the trophy is just unacceptable for both sides for the performance they have shown to reach here.
ICC’s Soft Corner For England
It is not that we are seeing something new happing at the ICC events. If we look at history, there have been instances like the ICC Champions trophy 2013 final, 2004 ICC championship final. Both these games were held in England and were a washout due to rain or bad weather. It seems ICC always has a soft corner for England while staging any ICC final.
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We know England is considered one of the best countries to host any big event, but ICC could have played safe this time considering the weather forecast during June.
Leading up to this mega event, ICC seems to have invested a lot of money and time to promote this mega final. We don’t criticize this move, as promoting an event as big as the ICC test championship final is also of prime importance. But they should have looked at other options for conducting the one-off test.
You invest money, resource, and time for promotion, but you forget to do the basics right. What will be the benefit of the publicity if the cricket fans get to watch rain instead of Cricket match ?
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Criticism Of ICC
Recently, former cricketers such as Sunil Gavaskar, Harsha Bhogle, Simon Dull, Virender Sehwag, to name a few, have criticized ICC for conducting this mega final in the UK, because June month brings a lot of rain in the country.
Kevin Peterson, one of England’s greats, said that ICC should have staged this final in the UAE. Both the teams deserve to get a better opportunity to have a proper final. ICC should learn a lesson from this and develop a good roadmap so that any ICC event’s final does not get hampered by rain.
