Former Indian captain Ganguly shares an effective way to avoid rain play

Former India captain Sourav Ganguly has come up with a solution to stop any further washouts in the ICC World Cup 2019 because of rain.

Already four matches have been washed out . The India vs New Zealand match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham being the latest . With forecasts of more rain next week and no reserve day for group matches, ICC find themselves in a difficult situation.

The former Indian captain speaking shared the idea during the coverage of India vs New Zealand match at Nottingham. He said the situation can be solved by changing the covers.

Here’s what he said

“The covers that are used in India, at the Eden Gardens are from England and using them here (in England) would have meant spending half the cost and it is also tax-free, so they should have used those here anyway. In India, we use these covers for all matches, so that when the rain stops the match can resume within 10 minutes. They are very light covers, it’s not difficult to lift it, You don’t need too much manpower. The blue covers that were used earlier in India used to take more than 10 times the time and people in comparison to now/”

The policy to cover the entire ground and not only the pitch and thirty-yard circle was initiated by Ganguly after he took charge as the president of Cricket Association of Bengal.

“The covers that are in Eden Gardens and in Lord’s are translucent covers, so light goes past it. This way the grass won’t dry up nor will the colour change from green to brown, if you use them to cover the outfield. For such important matches, and in a tournament like the World Cup — especially in a country like England where the rains are so frequent, having these covers are very important, especially on the outfield as well,” Ganguly explained.

“Today’s case is different, the match was called off not only because of the rain today — but it has been raining continuously for the past three days. The two reasons for the delay were firstly, the wet pitch and secondly, something that the viewers on screen can’t see is how dark the ground is, the match can’t begin in such a dark setting,” Ganguly added.

New Zealand, India, Pakistan, West Indies, Bangladesh and South Africa have all been affected with the rain .