ICC World Cup 2019: The World Cup of washouts

It seems as if the England rain also waited for a couple of years along with the players and fans for the World Cup 2019 as four games have ended without result already. Moreover, the last week has been extremely tough for the competition as all of those four washed out matches were supposed to be played in this period. In fact, only one of the last four matches of the tournament has produced a result; the Australia-Pakistan game in Taunton which was under cloud cover throughout.

June of 2018 was one of the driest in UK history as the average rainfall read only 35.4 mm. That number has already exceeded 4-5 times this year as the County Championship and the Women’s ODI series between England and Windies hosted in this part have also been affected. The four washouts are already the most in an edition of the World Cup and a few more could be added to this tally by end of the tournament.

The previous highest was two each in the 1992 World Cup jointly hosted by Australia-New Zealand and two in the 2003 CWC hosted by the African nations. A total of three matches this edition were called off even before a possibility of toss. In the first 11 editions of the tournament, only two came to an end in such a fashion. The game between Windies and Sri Lanka in 1979 and Australia-Bangladesh match in 2015 are the two CWC matches that got abandoned till 2015.

The County Ground in Bristol itself has had two such games in the past week due to its poor drainage system. The forecast for the next few days isn’t great either and in all possibility, the 2019 edition could have as many washouts as the previous 11 of them collectively witnessed. One of the main reason for the increase in the number of washouts is the lack of reserve days for the league phase.

The previous four editions of the World Cup hosted by England had the provision of a reserve day. A total of nine matches were completed on the reserve day during those four editions. The current tournament could have benefited by extension of cut off time as on most days, the weather remained dry in the evenings.

Rain affected matches in each World Cup:

(Stats as on June 13, 2019)