THOMAS BLOW: With state-of-the-art floodlights, it’s time to stop bad light stopping play
August 25, 2013. England are 3-0 up in The Ashes, with a historic 4-0 series win firmly in their sights. All they need is 21 runs off the last four overs – an easy feat with five wickets in hand and Chris Woakes and Matt Prior at the crease.
But they’re stopped in their tracks. With state-of-the-art floodlights glaring down upon them, the umpires decided the light was too bad. England are left to celebrate a third-straight Ashes win somewhat bewildered, and Woakes – on debut – is robbed of his chance to hit the hosts to victory.
Bad light is a big problem in modern cricket. It steals hours from paying spectators and stops players celebrating memorable wins. But years ago, the rule was different. Umpires would offer the light to the batsmen. After all, it was them who had a ball flying towards their head.
And then in 2010 the ICC decided to change the law. Today, the light isn’t offered. Instead, umpires use a combination of their own intuition and light readers to determine when play should be curtailed.
Can you imagine if this was the rule in December 2000? England are on the verge of winning a historic Test series in Pakistan, only for Steve Bucknor to take the teams off. One of English cricket’s most remembered triumphs would have never happened.
The dreaded light meter
Now, I’m not suggesting that we should revert back to the old rule. Clearly it was insufficient enough for the ICC to take action, and it’s important not to forget that. It gave the batting side an unfair advantage.
But why can’t we just be a little bit more flexible? When teams look certain to pull off a result in the allocated time, shouldn’t we look to force that result? Or, at the very least, allow officials to award the win to the likely victors? It could be bad light’s equivalent to the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method: The Blow-Common-Sense method…
And for that matter, why can’t we just generally avoid losing time in Test matches by trusting weather forecasts? If visibility is going to get poorer or rain is heading towards the ground, then why can’t we just abandon lunch or tea? Or perhaps have reduced breaks? After all, it’s not 1987 and Michael Fish isn’t presenting the forecast.
It’s time for us, as a sport, to be more proactive. Cricket needs to do all it can to ensure cricket happens. If we continue to be stubborn rather than flexible, we will fail to persuade thousands of possible punters to fall in love with the game.
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Posted by Marc Evans on 21/12/2019 at 21:59
In this day and age. Where cricket is competing with numerous other forms of entertainment, none of which has the same problems with the weather, the administrators need to reduce the stoppages to a minimum, and this includes an acceptance that a certain power of floodlight, when installed, will always be sufficient for play to continue, however poor the light. The umpires should have no say in the matter. Only in the advent of floodlight failures should light meters be used. If we had artificial wickets, which is I believe the way to go, in order to produce better cricket wickets the world over, the game could be played in light intermittent rain as well. This has always been a major bugbear in the county championship as there are many days during our summer when light showers can keep the players off for hours and we have the spectre of play being abandoned with bright sun flooding down, because of a wet wicket or outfield. I have always believed the punter should be the prime consideration in any professional sport, as without them there is no point to any of it.
Posted by Richard on 20/12/2019 at 15:14
We were supposed to be going to a T20 game last summer. But the forecast said it was going to rain on and off all evening, and the rain cast said that it would be on for most of the next two hours. With the game (if it happened) being on TV we decided that the drive to the ground to watch the covers come on and off probably wasn’t worth it. So we stayed at home and ordered some food. When I left home to pick it up, (1/2 an hour before the start) rain was being guaranteed. By the time I arrived at the takeaway (10 minutes before the start) the forecast had completely changed to no rain. And it didn’t. It might not be 1987 or Michael Fish but trusting the weather forecast?
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