Sport

Bad light frustrates England as Pakistan hold out

Play stopped at 4.45pm due to bad light regulations with Pakistan at 223-9

Naseem Shah and Mohammad Rizwan of Pakistan look on as umpire Richard Kettleborough checks the light meter reading during day two of the second #RaiseTheBat Test Match between England and Pakistan at the Ageas Bowl in Southampton, England. Photo: Gareth Copley/Getty Images for ECB

Vic Marks at the Ageas Bowl
Fri Aug 14 2020 - 19:31

Second Test, day two of five: Pakistan 223-9 (A Ali 60, M Rizwan 60*; J Anderson 3-24, S Broad 3-25).

So much creative, lateral thinking has been required to put on the two Test series in England this summer. Everyone has had to be unusually flexible; regulations have been bent so that the necessity of “neutral” umpires has been abandoned; Chris Broad has been refereeing a match in which his son has been playing and then cheered us all up by fining him £2,000 and nobody complained. So many sacrifices have been made to get the game going again. Which is why in a damp, dank second half of the summer, there is so much exasperation when everything stops because of bad light.

Amid all the quick-footed innovation it remains far too easy for the game to allow itself to look preposterously stupid. The regulations now tell us that the umpires take a reading for bad light and that remains the standard for the rest of the game so all flexibility is banished presumably on the basis that umpires lack the commonsense to adapt to specific situations. They cannot be trusted to draw their own conclusions about what is dangerous. They just read the numbers on their meters.

So it was that at 4.45pm they led the teams off the field in very odd circumstances because the impression given by both was that they wanted to continue playing. Even umpire Richard Kettleborough seemed reluctant to depart but how could he defy the regulations? Neither set of players seemed to regard the conditions as “dangerous”.

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All the while the floodlights blazed down on the ground, great expensive pylons designed to extend the possibilities of play. As the Test players left the field Pakistan’s limited-overs cricketers on the neighbouring ground were still involved in a vigorous white ball middle practice without the benefit of floodlights. It may be time for a rethink of the bad light regulations and to explore a more precise definition of the word “dangerous”.

By the time play was called off on a day of 40.2 overs yet no rain after 10am there was plenty to be grumpy about. In the pavilion England’s dressing room may have been the grumpier of the two. Pakistan had battled tenaciously in tricky conditions. It is not often that a batting side can puff out their chests after scoring 96 for four at two and a half runs per over.

Under leaden skies the ball was refusing to age; it may have grown a little softer but it remained rosy red on the shiny side and it kept swinging. Wickets might have tumbled like skittles but two batsmen in particular, Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan, were so resolute and watchful that England were required to take a second new ball in their efforts to finish off the innings.

The hour’s play that was possible before lunch produced 29 runs and no wickets. Babar opted not to attempt any drives on the offside against the swinging ball, but anything on his stumps was clipped away with absolute certainty through the leg side. He has yet to make a major score in this series – 69 in Manchester is his highest so far – but he oozes quality and has masses of time to play his shots. Occasionally he flirts outside that off-stump but he is fast becoming one of the batsmen of this generation.

Babar fell soon after lunch for 47 to a fine delivery from Stuart Broad, which he edged to Jos Buttler. When Yasir Shah nicked an away-swinger from Jimmy Anderson in the same direction the end seemed nigh especially after Shaheen Shah Afridi ran himself out. But there followed a gutsy and unlikely ninth wicket partnership of 39 – gutsy because Mohammad Rizwan is that type of cricketer, unlikely because Mohammad Abbas’ batting credentials are wafer thin.

Rizwan, who had offered a tough chance on 14 to Buttler after gloving a bouncer from Broad down the leg-side, became more aggressive, while Abbas hung in there as best he could. England lost their discipline. It took one little advance down the pitch by Rizwan against the bowling of Chris Woakes, which ended with a meaty clip over square leg, for England to desert the policy that had served them so well for the previous 80 overs. The field spread for Rizwan, sometimes with five men on the boundary, and the bowlers propelled bouncers and wides on the assumption that Rizwan was suddenly bound to middle any swinging deliveries on a length – despite the evidence of the rest of the Pakistan innings.

Meanwhile England struggled to get Abbas on strike and they lacked the pace to unnerve him when he was facing. So Abbas shuffled into line and the frustrations grew. Perhaps England were relieved that the umpires took the players off 15 minutes before the scheduled tea interval since the break offered an opportunity for the wise men to sit down and reassess the best way forward.

On their return the pace bowlers returned to basics and hit a length and then Abbas was palpably lbw to the first delivery he faced from Broad. Soon after to general exasperation everyone walked off. – Guardian