Dave Houghton: "I don't think we should have even bowled a ball, to be honest"

The Zimbabwe head coach was critical of the officials after watching his team slip and slide in wet conditions before the Group 2 match was belatedly abandoned

Zimbabwe head coach Dave Houghton has criticised the sequence of events that eventually led to his side's clash with South Africa eventually being abandoned.

Virtually the entire game – reduced to nine overs before the start and then to seven after a delay – was played out in varying degrees of rain, before the match was belatedly rained off with South Africa just 13 runs from their adjust target, at which point they were already ahead of where they needed to be after five overs, according to DLS revisions.

But with a minimum of five overs needed for a game, that was irrelevant, though had the teams returned to the field after that stoppage, South Africa would have been crowned as winners, having already made the runs required for a five-over chase.

By then, however, Zimbabwe seamer Richard Ngarava had limped off injured after slipping in his follow-through, while wicketkeeper Regis Chakabva also slid while trying to move down the legside. Craig Ervine, Zimbabwe's captain, resorted to bowling his spinners in a bid to protect his seamers from conditions underfoot.

"I understand the need to try and get these games on for the public and TV people and I understand the need for us to play in slightly inclement weather to try and get a result, but I felt we overstepped that mark in this game," said Houghton, who insisted that he didn't even think the game should have begun, given conditions that South Africa's Lungi Ngidi had admitted at the halfway stage were particularly wet.

"I don't think we should have even bowled a ball, to be honest," added Houghton, "but the umpires are the guys making the decisions out in the middle and they seemed to think it was fit to play. I disagree with them but there is not much I can do off the field.

^{Zimbabwe and South Africa took a point each from a farcical game (David Gray/AFP via Getty Images)}

"I asked the question of the third umpire as to why we'd gone back on while it was raining, but he said that was up to the umpires in the middle to make that decision.

"I thought the rain got so heavy at one stage it was ridiculous. For most of the evening it was misty mizzle but it got to the stage where you could actually hear it thumping on the rooftop of the dugout. To me, that's time to get off the field.

"The field was wet; it was wet when we started; it was wet when South Africa fielded. So, they were difficult conditions for both sides, but it just got more and more wet as we bowled. When your keeper's sliding trying to move down the legside standing up to the spinners, it's too wet. I don't think the conditions were right to carry on playing."

The teams took a point each from the game, which descended into farce by the time a heavier band of rain ended proceedings as Sean Williams waited to bowl the fourth over of the innings. At that point, Quinton de Kock was already unbeaten on 47, having seen the need to waste no time. Ultimately, he just fell short, with umpires Michael Gough and Ahsan Raza belatedly taking the players from the field for a second time in the innings.

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