This week, the Women's T20 World Cup cricket tournament in Australia descended into farce when England were beaten in the semi-final - without a ball being bowled. They were supposed to play against an exciting India team in an eagerly anticipated match, only for the game to be wiped out by rain. This meant that India would advance to the final, as they finished top of their first-round group while England - having begun the tournament with a shock defeat by South Africa - finished second in theirs. To add salt to England's wounds, the rain eased off enough to allow hosts and pre-tournament favourites Australia to beat South Africa in the second semi-final, when they too would have been eliminated by a washout, having surprisingly lost their opening match to India. In effect, they reached the final because their semi-final happened to be scheduled for later in the day. Just to add to the sense of farce, for a time it looked as though Australia too would fall victim to the elements, with rain threatening to prevent the South African innings from starting, only for the rain to clear just nine minutes before the deadline. As well as being a cruel manner for England to be eliminated, this is surely not how India would have wanted to reach their first Women's T20 World Cup final.
The reason for these ridiculous scenes was straightforward enough: the International Cricket Council (ICC) had, in its wisdom, neglected to schedule a reserve day for the semi-finals (there is one in place for the final). That it should have made such an omission beggars all belief in a sport well known to be as vulnerable to the elements as cricket is: even more so given that the tournament was scheduled for the wettest part of the Australian year. Nor are semi-final reserve days scheduled for the Men's T20 World Cup, also to take place in Australia, in October and November. By contrast reserve days were scheduled at the most recent women's and men's 50-over World Cups: indeed, in last year's men's tournament, the reserve day was needed for New Zealand to beat India in their semi-final. Had there been no reserve day, and had the same rule used in the T20 World Cup been in force, an abandoned game would have eliminated the Kiwis, as they had finished below India in the group stage. We can surely all agree that the thrilling, dramatic, heart-stopping Cricket World Cup final that captured the nation's imagination would have been much poorer without the efforts of the talented, resilient and ultimately wretchedly unlucky, New Zealand team. Surely, if a place could be found for reserve days in the 50-over World Cup, why not the T20 equivalent? In this year's tournament, the semi-finals were scheduled for Thursday and the final for Sunday - plenty of time to fit in a reserve day if necessary. Some, such as the BBC's Henry Moeran, have argued that England have no cause to complain, on the basis that all the teams signed up to the tournament format, and that England only have themselves to blame for losing to South Africa. Neither of these claims stands up to scrutiny. When it came to agreeing with the format, what power did the relatively poorly remunerated female cricketers have against the commercial might of the ICC? The top male cricketers would have had the financial muscle to force an ICC climbdown, but not their female counterparts. As for the second point, why should losing one group match, however unexpected, deny England the opportunity of reaching the final? In last year's men's 50-over World Cup, England and New Zealand lost three group games each: their respective semi-final opponents, Australia and India, lost just two and one games respectively. Yet who would question that England and New Zealand both deserved to be in the final? Should Australia win tomorrow's final, would their triumph somehow be illegitimate because they too lost in the group stage? Simply to pose the question is to expose the absurdity of this position.
But there is also a wider point to be made here. Semi-finals (and finals) are supposed to be knock-out matches, and it offends the most basic principle of knock-out sport that, thanks to an arbitrary rule, one team does not need to win the game. Knock-out formats are supposed to promote excitement, with both teams going all-out for victory, and both knowing that one error can mean the end of their hopes of glory. But all this is diluted when one team needs only to avoid defeat. It is also unfair: in knock-out matches, unlike league games, the teams are meant to start on an equal footing, with both having equal mathematical chances of advancing to the next round or claiming the trophy, but this principle is clearly violated when only one side is required to win. Group-stage placings are supposed to determine the pairings for the knock-out games, but not their outcomes: imagine if the FA Cup had a rule stipulating that in the event of a draw the team in the higher division would go through! Such an idea would clearly be laughed out of court - and rightly so. This is not the first time this scenario has happened in cricket, of course. The 1999 men's 50-over World Cup semi-final between Australia and South Africa at Edgbaston ended in a tie, with Australia reaching the final by dint of finishing above their opponents in the Super Sixes. This clearly was an unsatisfactory conclusion, so the Super Over was introduced. Famously, last year's World Cup final at Lord's was decided by a Super Over, and when, that, too, was tied, England were declared the winners by virtue of hitting more boundaries. For all the excitement (and cruelty) of the climax to that match, I have always felt that England's win is tainted because it depended on some arcane regulation, not on scoring the most runs on the day: significantly, the ICC has now changed the rules so that if a Super Over is tied, another Super Over will take place, as should have been the case all along. World Cups are not bilateral contests, like the Ashes or the Ryder Cup: in such competitions, when always one team is the holder and the other the challenger it makes sense that in the event of a drawn series, the holder retains the trophy. It is perfectly fair in those situations that a draw preserves the status quo, and that the challenger is required to win in order to take the trophy away from the holder. The same rule, of course, applies in boxing world championship fights. But to have such a rule in a tournament is unfair and unjust.
The solution to this mess is straightforward. Reserve days should be introduced for the semi-finals in all future T20 World Cups, starting with the men's tournament later this year, though admittedly it would not be a good look if the men's tournament had reserve days while the women's did not. In the meantime, it is a great pity that a tournament that should be remembered for some superb individual performances from the likes of Meg Lanning, Laura Wolfvaart and above all young Shafali Verma, will instead be overshadowed by the incompetence of the scheduling.
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