QUICK COMMENT: Cricket needs to go indoors to stop looking ridiculous on those many rainy days | Cricket News
It disrupts the foundational ethos of cricket as a glorious outdoor sport, watched while soaking in sunshine on English-looking meadows. But we live in the real world most of the time. And cricket matches need to move indoors if the sport is serious about chasing fair results, that are not at the mercy of rains.
This is 2024, India is mercifully not England and there is nothing glorious about a stop-start Test match interrupted perennially Bengaluru rains. The glorious uncertainties are all fine, with all three results possible on Day 5, after a mix of rains, 46 all out, a brilliantly barmy Sarfaraz Khan century, and the prospect of Bumrah & Jadeja ending up giving India a win. But if rains fiddle with winning chances of either teams robbing time at inopportune times, or much worse, it ends in a draw because skies get sullen, sulk and cry, then cricket ends up looking ridiculous.
Just in this last one year, an Asian Games gold medal got decided coin toss after rains, the T20 World Cup was under constant threat of being hosed down, Afghanan and New Zealand couldn’t get a Test going because of lousy drainage, and now this Bengaluru Test. Not every ground in the world – from West Indies to Sri Lanka – can afford impeccable drainage facilities, and many get shamed for not being rich enough, forgetting that rains are causing unprecedented havoc, which poor groundsmen can’t always mop up.
Insane rain poured down, forcing the ground staff to seek cover ⛈️⛈️☂️ There is no chance for play to resume anymore so they called for stumps 🤝#INDvNZ @BCCI @BLACKCAPS #bangalore pic.twitter.com/RLyAfFKNnx
— Willow TV US (@willowtv) October 19, 2024
Climate change is a real concern for this sport, even if India yo-yoing between 40 in one inning and 400 in the next, seems like a nice chuckle on a Sunday morning. For countries like South Africa, rains have been not-so-funny since 1992, yet cricket tends to laugh it all off because of its Duckworth Lewis log books. But if you can bite back the giggle on the whimsical ways in which cricket results get decided and get a tad serious, the sport headed next to the Olympics, and with a lot of money invested, could do with fewer variables interfering and messing with its results.
It’s time for cricket to seriously consider indoor playing options. It’s a quaint sport – much loved for it too – that starts sneezing and sniffling the moment dark clouds gather. Football, rug and hockey don’t stop for rains, but cricket mandates and needs the stops. But if rains have to be taken out of the equation, because world over sport does everything to end needless stoppages and get a move on, then indoor stadia have to be explored.
Indoor cricket will scandalize the traditionals. But then, what doesn’t?
