NOTTINGHAM: Incle­ment English weather claimed yet another World Cup match after India’s league-round game against 2015 finalists New Zealand was called off without a ball being bowled at Trent Bridge on Thursday.

A soggy outfield from overnight showers had already delayed the start of the contest between the tournament’s only two unbeaten sides.

Umpires Marais Erasmus and Paul Reiffel carried out almost hourly inspections in intermittent drizzle before finally throwing in the towel at 3:00pm (1400 GMT) local time.

This was the fourth match to be either called off or abandoned in the rain-hit tournament with many questioning the absence of reserve days for league matches.

“Sensible decision to not play, given the outfield wasn’t fully fit,” India captain Virat Kohli said. “One point not a bad thing for sides that have won all their games so far. So we’ll take it.”

New Zealand top the table with seven points, two ahead of India who have played one game fewer.

Having won their previous three games, Kiwi skipper Kane Williamson was not too worried and welcomed the gap before facing South Africa at Edgbaston in Birmingham on Wednesday.

“Obviously you turn up hoping to compete for two points but we’ve been about four days and we haven’t seen the sun, so this doesn’t surprise us. It’s not ideal, but little bit of time off is also important,” William­son said. “They will get some sun at some point but not on our trip here. With training indoors you just try and get what you need out of it. It’s not ideal but having a bit of time off is also important in these competitions.

“We have some break now midway through, so it’s a good chance for the guys to freshen up and look forward to the next challenge.

“South Africa are a very good side, we know every time we play them, they’re extremely competitive, but we have a few days to refresh and come back.”

The hostile weather denied India an opportunity to trial their new opening pair with K.L. Rahul, replacing the injured Shikhar Dhawan, joining vice-captain Rohit Sharma at the top of the order.

Dhawan, who was hit by a Pat Cummins bouncer during his match-winning century against Australia at The Oval, is likely to miss India’s next three games.

“Shikhar will be in a plaster for a couple of weeks, we’ll assess and see,” Kohli said.

“Hopefully he’ll be available for the later half and the semi-finals. He’s motivated, we wanted to keep him back.”

The International Cri­cket Council has faced criticism over the lack of reserve days in the group stage but said having them for every match would be ‘extremely complex’.

New Zealand head coach Gary Stead said it was unfortunate for tournament organisers to lose four games to rain out of just 18 matches so far in the round-robin event.

“Reserve days are going to be a logistical nightmare, probably the ICC has made that fairly well known,” Stead told reporters.

“Unfortunately it’s a bit of an anomaly the amount of days we have lost to rain — the biggest amount of days lost in World Cups ever.

“It’s a bit of bad luck.

It can rain anywhere in the world. My first tour was in Dubai [for the Pakistan series last year] and it rained in the desert.”

STANDINGS

(Tabulated under played, won, lost, no-result, points, net run-rate):

New Zealand 4 3 0 1 7 +2.163

Australia 4 3 1 0 6 +0.057

India 3 2 0 1 5 +0.539

England 3 2 1 0 4 +1.307

Sri Lanka 4 1 1 2 4 -1.517

West Indies 3 1 1 1 3 +2.054

Bangladesh 4 1 2 1 3 -0.714

Pakistan 4 1 2 1 3 -1.796

South Africa 4 0 3 1 1 -0.952

Afghanistan 3 0 3 0 0 -1.493

Updated after abandonment of India vs New Zealand match on Thursday

Published in Dawn, June 14th, 2019