Umpires for the fourth Test, Ahsan Raza, Kumar Dharmasena, and the groundsmen have come under the scanner on Sunday evening. As England needed 35 runs to win the Test match with four wickets in hand, the rain started to pour. However, after a while, the rain did stop, and according to the rules, the play could have been resumed at 11:12 PM IST. However, the umpires called it stumps at 11:00 PM; as a result, the game extended to the fifth day. Former cricketers Nasser Hussain and Dinesh Karthik were quite critical of the incident.
“Most importantly for viewers and fans who paid good money, remember Monday is a workday, and this sort of series deserves a finale in front of a big crowd at an iconic cricket ground, the Oval. That would have been some finale on Sunday, you may have just knocked off 35, or you may have seen Chris Woakes walk downstairs in a sling. I’m just wondering if they could have done anything, they had like 42-43 minutes to play with and within the laws and the playing regulations,” said Hussain on Sky Sports.
“We’re willing to push that back half an hour, are you okay, both teams, are you okay to do that, if one of the teams, if India could say, our bowlers are exhausted, give them a night’s sleep, then you say, absolutely fine, or England say, we’ve had a mad hour there, we want to come back tomorrow, that’s fine, but I’m just wondering if you could have a bit of common sense in there, but it’s a shame,” he said
“Little bit of rain, and I agree the rules are the rules, but I kind of like what Nasser said, that half an hour extension that you get meant, even if it meant it needed to start at 6.45, it could well have been 11, 12 hours, it could have gone either way, the crowd would have gotten to see the result, and it’s a nice feeling to know that both teams have gone so hard, you give them the option, they don’t want to use it, fair enough, everybody’s going to come back tomorrow for whatever it’s worth, but today, I think a little bit more common sense would have been to ask, I’m not saying it should happen, to ask I think is the fair thing to do,” he added.
“On a day like this, especially with a Test series of this magnitude, it would be nice to have 20,000 people at the ground cheering, whichever team won, I mean, it was either going to go England 3-1, which is what it looked like for a majority of the day, and then suddenly after tea, India’s come back and they have some renewed excellence with the ball,” Karthik chipped in.
