Bad light was the villain once again during Day 2 of the World Test Championship Final between India and New Zealand. Play had to be stopped several times because of bad light and the day was eventually stopped earlier than expected because of it.
During a discussion with ESPN Cricinfo, former Indian cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar batted for the rules of ‘bad light’ to become clearer and more reasonable. He mentioned that the umpires always tend to take a cautious approach but the primary yardstick which governs the bad light has disappeared over the years.
“The rules can be a little bit reasonable. The concept of bad light is that you are so much at a disadvantage that a batsman cannot see the ball and they could get out or could get hurt. But that yardstick is now completely gone,” Manjrekar said.
“Now we have a certain kind of understanding of what is good and what is bad, and it is, obviously, the officials now are on the side of taking extra caution. Very rarely you would see the officials forcing the players to continue playing against their wishes.
“And I have covered the game at the ground on many occasions and the play has been called off, it’s never that dark where you cannot see the ball,” he added.
Day 1 of the WTC Final got washed out because of the rain and there are genuine concerns that there won’t be enough time to fetch a result in the Test despite the addition of a reserve day. According to the weather forecast, Day 4 might also be washed out with heavy showers expected in Southampton throughout.
Talking about his experience of playing cricket during monsoon, Manjrekar said that he always found rainy days frustrating. He also went on to add that different players have different reactions to the rain delay.
I found raindays extremely frustrating. One thing that happens is everybody gets together and there’s a lot of talking. Some of the great conversations happen at that time. There are different players who handle these types of delays differently,” Sanjay Manjrekar replied.
“Some guys are in this negative state of mind, where they start hoping that it continues to rain the whole day and the match does not happen because they are sort of unprepared, right?” he signed off.
