Former England cricketer Michael Vaughan was a frustrated man after the Melbourne Renegades’ clash with the Perth Scorchers in the Big Bash League was abandoned after 6.5 overs due to an unsafe wet pitch.
The match was preceded by heavy rain in Geelong, which caused water to seep through the coverings onto the pitch, resulting in uneven bounce and a dangerous batting surface for the opposition.
In Vaughan’s opinion, cricket must do more to safeguard the game from such incidents and heed the warning signs of wet weather to put systems in place to make sure matches can go ahead.
“I just get frustrated with cricket. Cricket has a habit of these scenarios. I’m pretty sure they knew it was going to rain all day yesterday, can’t you get extra covers in? I saw it in a Test match in the UK at Old Trafford, I saw it last year at the SCG when their wasn’t enough covering … too much time taken out of the game,” Michael Vaughan told Fox Sports after the BBL game was abandoned.
“We always just think ‘Oh it’s unfortunate’, but seriously you can’t get enough covers to cover an area of turf and get more covers in to make sure today’s game goes ahead. I just find sometimes in cricket we make too many excuses for things that should not happen.
“That shouldn’t be the case that a game gets abandoned because water got on the pitch,” he added.
As Vaughan said, there have been a number of big games in recent years that have been affected by wet weather, particularly in the United Kingdom. Another notorious instance was the West Indies-England Test in Jamaica in 1998, which was abandoned after the first day due to a bouncy and unplayable pitch at Sabina Park.
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