My plan today was to watch a bit of the England v South Africa T20 and then write a bit about the upcoming World Cup. But, of course, the match has been delayed and delayed and delayed again due to rain. And so I thought about writing a post about overs lost due to weather, or maybe how many times the D/L method has been used, or how many matches have been outright abandoned due to poor weather.
But after spending an hour or so with Statsguru, it just wasn’t happening.
So I searched for “rain” on cricinfo for a laugh and the results included 520 blog posts, 55 photo galleries, and almost 1600 Wisden Almanak stories, not to mention the countless regular cricinfo stories and match reports.
The first Wisden story to mention rain was a report on a inter-university match between Cambridge and Oxford in June of 1870. The match was supposed to start on a Monday, but the toss was delayed for five hours due to a deluge. The two day match was decided on Tuesday in front of 8,000 of England’s finest. Cambridge won by 58 runs. 14 of the 20 wickets taken were taken, at least in part, by the wicket keepers.
And then a quick look through the galleries led me to this picture from Lord’s during last summers test series against Sri Lanka. An image that strikes dread in the heart of every cricket fan everywhere, surely:
Cricket and rain. Rain and cricket. Like a silent and sexless arranged marriage.
I pulled up this map of worldwide rainfall:
Of course, as you can see, the majority of test cricket happens in the darkest greenest regions on the map. Instead of looking to expand to Ireland or in the USA, the ICC should look to include north Africa countries, or the middle east, or even Russia. That would at least delay the spread of the scourge that is killing cricket.
Anyway, enough silliness for today, here’s a song about rain featuring a Englishman performed at a benefit for test nation Bangladesh in 1971 (the year of the first ODI):
Limited Overs 