Hurricane season makes T20 World Cup path perilous for Black Caps

Thursday, 6 June 2024

The Black Caps opener/wicketkeeper says he's recovered from the broken thumb which ended his summer prematurely.

The absence of a reserve day during hurricane season makes the planned World Cup path more perilous for the Black Caps.

New Zealand are set to begin their Twenty20 tournament campaign on Saturday (NZ time) in Guyana with a night match against Afghanistan.

The side’s preparation has been hampered by wet weather and the top teams at the Cup will be anxiously consulting forecasts during group play, with the possibility of rain and storms preventing them from contesting matches they’d be expected to win.

The tournament had its first rain-affected match on Wednesday (NZ time) when only 10 overs were possible in defending champions England’s encounter with Scotland in Barbados.

Both sides took one point apiece from the washed-out ‘no result’ game, and while Scotland may have been the unhappier side when play was called off as they were 90-0 batting first, England would have been banking on two points from a full encounter.

Also in New Zealand’s group are Cup co-hosts the West Indies, and minnows Uganda and Papua New Guinea.

The T20 Cricket World Cup match between England and Scotland in Bridgetown, Barbados, was washed out.

While Papua New Guinea gave the Windies a fright in Guyana on Monday in a five-wicket win with an over to spare by the hosts, Uganda were hammered by Afghanistan by 125 runs at the same venue on Tuesday.

The Black Caps will be banking on four points from their games against Uganda and PNG, which, combined with a win over either their first-up opponents or the Windies in their following game, will assure them of a top-two group finish and a place in the Super Eight.

Should they not take two points from their clash with Afghanistan, a washout against one of the two lowly-ranked sides would almost certainly lead to an early exit from the event.

'It's definitely somewhat of a concern that in such a quick period of time with the pool play that you want to play every match you can to give yourself the best chance of qualifying for the next stage,' Black Caps head coach Gary Stead said on Tuesday.

“We can't control the weather unfortunately and it is a bit of a rainy season around here at the moment - thankfully it looks like the weather bomb that was hitting here has passed us by. There still is a little rain from time to time, we are in conditions that can change very quickly.”

Black Caps coach Gary Stead is wary of the weather in the West Indies.

The forecast for the Providence venue for the Friday night match there has heavy showers expected in the morning, with “a stray thunderstorm” also possible.

New Zealand’s next three group games will be in Tarouba in Trinidad and Tobago.

At the tournament, both sides must face a minimum of five overs to constitute a match. In the group and Super Eight stages, games which start at 10.30am or in the early afternoon have 90 minutes of extra time in which to bowl the overs, while matches which start at 7.30pm or 8.30pm will have an hour of extra time available.

If more time beyond that is lost, then overs start being reduced at a rate of 14.11 overs per hour, or one over every 4.25 minutes.

There are no reserve days until the semifinal stage, where only the game in Trinidad has that option while the semi in Guyana (starting at 10.30am) will have 250 minutes of extra time available should weather interfere.

The wettest period in the Caribbean is usually between July and November, but the hurricane season has started already.