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| England skipper Eoin Morgan with the coveted trophy |
I think Gautam
Gambhir is right; it is indeed an idiotic rule to award a match to a side on
the basis of number of boundaries hit by it. In the case of the Final World Cup
2019 cricket match the very situation at the end of the match indicated that
England was no better than the New Zealand team as the latter had equaled the
total score piled up by the former with a lesser number of boundaries. That
shows the proficiency of the team. It is the number of runs that win matches
and not the number of boundaries hit by a side. Boundaries after all help to
build up a total and they can be scored on account of any number of reasons,
like patchy fielding or presence of a pinch hitter in the opposition and so on.
Capability of hitting boundaries cannot be the criterion for judging a winner.
To that extent I feel that the rules, if they prescribe a winner on the basis
of the number of boundaries hit by a team, are bizarre and verging on being ridiculous.
In fact, I find
the New Zealand team fared better on two counts. One I have already indicated
above, i.e. it scored equal number of runs without as many boundaries as scored
by England. It also fared better than England in equaling the total set by it
losing lesser number of wickets. Which total is better: 240 for 10 wickets or
240 for 8 wickets? Obviously the latter! Hence the winner should have been the
New Zealand team - not the English team. The question of a tie, therefore, did
not arise. It could have been a tie had both the teams scored the same number
of runs for the loss of the same number of wickets.
The result
announced perhaps cannot be changed now but the ICC should sit down and think
about it to make the rules more rational and logical. Damage has been done this
time to the New Zealanders. It needs to be ensured that no other team suffers
the same fate as New Zealand in future.
*Photo from internet
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