Rain, rain, rain.
Yesterday, the fourth ODI between England and India at the Oval was marred by persistent rain, finally ending as a tie (not a draw, mind you, but a tie) on the Duckworth-Lewis method. (Isn’t the method supposed to produce a result? Isn’t that its only purpose?)
Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka, the fifth day of the 2nd test between Sri Lanka and Australia was greatly shortened by rain, helping the hosts preserve a draw.
AND: in Holland, their one day match against Kenya has been delayed by rain. The Kenyans tour of the Netherlands has been a complete washout so far.
Now, I realize that rain delays and rain shortened matches are nothing new in the sport. They have been dealing with it for well over a hundred years now, and I am sure smarter people than myself have come up with theories on how to best combat the rain. Domes, floodlights so matches can play into the evening to make up overs lost to weather, different colored balls…etc, and I am not saying I have any answers here, but something has to be done.
It doesn’t help that the sport is wildly popular in three of the wettest nations on the planet (India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh) (Cherrpunji, on the eastern slopes of the Himalaya in Shillong, India, is the wettest place on Earth), and even England is infamous for its damp summers, but I still think there has to be a solution to this. I always say that there is always so much cricket, but really, when you think about it, there isn’t.
When a minnow has a test washed out, for instance, that might have been one of only five they will play all year long. In Major League Baseball however, by comparison, if they lose a game to weather, who cares, as they have 161 other games to play.
Get to work, ICC. Forget about DRS or the IPL or the Associates, let’s figure out this rain issue.
I mean, for crying out, the means in which the sport decides rain shortened one-dayers (The Duckworth-Lewis Method) is the most ridiculously complicated thing ever. I think Google’s search algorithm is easier to understand. It attempts to understand and accurately predict the outcome of a sporting event, which is seriously insane when you think about it.
That’s it from here. Thankfully, it looks as though the rain is going to hold off in England today, which means I have County Championship matches to follow.
Until tomorrow
Limited Overs 
So you basically want to shorten all cricket to Twenty20 so we could shove in 150 matches in the season.
The Duckworth/Lewis method is complicated *because* they are trying to get a result. And a tie *is* a result, by definition. If the system was simple, it would take less elements into consideration, and would be unsuitable. You just as well claim computers should be replaced with abacuses because they are ridiculously complicated.
Everything has a result. Baseball is shorter (about 3 hours), baseball can be played immediately after rain. Baseball can be played in closed domes, on astroturf. Cricket isn’t. You need real grass for cricket, therefore you need open stadiums for cricket, therefore rain. If you want more matches, you have Twenty20, which are fast, short, and seems to be very popular. If you want First Class cricket, you need to be prepared for the possibility of rain, unless you play all your matches in dry countries.
My post was intended as a bit of a joke, but I was also expressing some very real frustration with how rain seems to ruin so many potentially great matches, Sunday at Lord’s being the most recent example.
And, no, I don’t want domes, and no, I don’t want the ICC to start focusing on the issue of, err, rain, and I do understand that is part of first class cricket, part of its strategies and its lore, and finally yes I realize this sounds like furious backpedaling, but really, it was all a bit of a joke.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
Heh. I got the joke, but as we often see, sometimes “others” don’t catch on those (just google “Sachin never won the Ashes”), so if someone gets the joke, ignore my rant. If someone doesn’t get it, I do stand by what I said. Rain is a problem, think about Glamorgan and their eternal inability to get any kind of season going what with their Swalake stadium being more of a pool than a Cricket Ground. But life is a game of compromises and balance, and for every good there’s bad and vice versa, and for the greatest game of them all, being first-class cricket, to exist, we have to live with the possibility of rain ruining matches, series, and even seasons.