It’s Dark Outside
The first test between England and NZ has struggled to really get going thanks to the lovely English summer. So much time has already been lost to wet weather and dark skies, and with the forecast for Saturday also not looking much cop you have to wonder if we’ll get a result out of this game.
There isn’t much anyone can do about the rain delays aside of building an indoor cricket stadium, but Alec Stewart on the TMS blog raises a good point about test grounds having permanent lights to supplement the light when we have generally crappy days like yesterday and today. They wouldn’t be there so we can play when its night-time, but just to help out and stop annoying the paying customers who have seen a stop-start day of cricket which never really got going at all. It makes good sense, although individual grounds may have issues with planning permission, I think its something that the ECB should be pushing for at each test ground in the UK.
Onto the match itself - which show England looking pretty good in their new Adidas gear! I know some people aren’t too fond at the lack of woolly jumpers, but this is 2008 and those people need to get with the times a bit more! McCullum was the star of the NZ side with the bat, with an entertaining if not overly orthodox innings who really gave the Kiwi’s any standing in the game. Sideshow Ryan wasn’t quite on the spot on Thursday, but managed to take something like 4 wickets for 5 runs to wrap up the NZ innings. Broad bowled well, and Anderson and Monty did ok as well, but I can’t help but think we let the Kiwi’s get away with scoring more than they should have. I guess we’ll see once we’ve put some runs on the board and that’s when we’ll be able to tell.
Roll on some more summer weather…
Comments
5 Responses to “It’s Dark Outside”
Leave a Reply
The weather, I think, could be crucial to the momentum of the team. A summer tainted by rain, even if it is not to the expense of England winning the series, wouldn’t be ideal.
We want five days of sun, in which England score buckets of runs and win convincingly. It will also help generate more interest around the game, something which, during a rain-affected summer would decrease.
Agree 100% regarding floodlights, although when I watched England in Durban, South Africa, they had floodlights they used them and then the umpires still offered the batsmen the light which was a joke as we only needed 2 wickets to win if i remember rightly and if the flood lights are not good enough for test match batting they shouldn’t be used for ODI’s!!!!
P.S. An indoor cricket super stadium would be immense, you could play 20/20’s and ODI’s in the winter months and have the summer for Tests. I should work for the ECB, ha
Disappointing end to the test today - think we would have nicked it if it hadn’t been for the rain delays. Although New Zealand have shown that in How, Oram, McCullum, Vettori and Martin - they do have some quality in their side.
Too true about the disappointing end to the test Thomas - I was going to write a new post but figured I’d just be moaning about the weather again so I thought better of it!
The quality in their side is obvious in individuals, and put them together and that is why we lost a test there in the winter and scraped through in the others - they aren’t a bad side. They have the potential to put together a string of match winning sessions and we’ll have to be on our toes!
We sure do. If they had the likes of Fleming and Styris in their middle order as well, they would be even stronger. They are in transcition but definetley moving in the right direction.