Nottingham: New Zealand coach Gary Stead Thursday termed World Cup game wash-out against India as “unfortunate and frustrating” but agreed with ICC’s assertion that reserve days will be a “logistical nightmare”.
New Zealand coach’s opinion was virtually seconded by India’s fielding coach R Sridhar, who compared the Trent Bridge outfield to a slippery “skating rink” where it remains a risk of players getting injured. “Yeah, it would have been lovely to play India. It’s always tough mentally, I think on a day like this, when you come down prepared to play, and it doesn’t happen. But it’s out of our control. We can’t really do much about it, so we’ve got to move on quickly for South Africa,” Stead said after the match was called off without a ball being bowled. However, Stead agreed with ICC CEO Dave Richardson’s opinion that reserve days are not an option despite inclement weather and unlikely downpour in the month of June. “Reserve days, I think, is going to be a logistical nightmare. The ICC, I think, have made that fairly well-known. Unfortunately, it’s a bit of an anomaly already. When you look at the amount of days we’ve lost already, I think it’s the biggest sort of amount of days lost in a World Cup ever,” he said. “
So, we can’t do much about that. We just have to, I guess, push on with what the schedule is,” said Stead. Sridhar also agreed that it’s frustrating but nothing can be done at the moment. “Oh, there’s a big technical committee from the ICC on that. It depends on the format, the time available. We don’t have any days off in this tournament. Every day there is a game. So there is hardly an opportunity to have a reserve day. I don’t know the technical aspect of it. The ICC will decide that. It’s not for me to take that call,” the India fielding coach said. As much as India would have loved a tough game before the clash against Pakistan on Sunday, Sridhar does not want to harp too much on the “uncontrollable”. “It’s uncontrollable, isn’t it? You really can’t control the weather, so we have had two good games.
We came here looking forward to third good one, but unfortunately, we can’t control the weather,” he said. “I went on the ground. It was almost like a skating rink. So it would put too much risk on the players to play on there, especially at the early phase of the tournament.” (PTI)
