According to popular Greek myth, Zeus (the God of lighting, thunder, and rain) once drowned the entire world in a sea of torrential rain. The Olympian God devoured mankind in an unfathomable flood while leaving out only Deucalion, son of Prometheus, to repopulate the world post the Pandora’s Box apocalypse. Little did Zeus know that his mercy would one day manifest into an administrative body for cricket which would not only gawk at rainy skies in utter confusion but also refuse to implement rationality and logic in face of impending, frustratingly game-wrenching showers.

The ICC, or as they should be known as the Illogical Cricket Circus, is essentially on course in ruining the greatest cricketing event on the planet and infuriatingly enough most it eventually comes down to their inability on doing simple Google searches along with the procurement or lack off rainproof covers. The World cup has now seen two washouts in the span of a week and in a tournament which was shortened to a 10 team event it makes this entire process, at least for me, a gargantuan piece of incompetence.

Having said that, it also puts into perspective the role of the English Cricket Board and how they have cleverly provided their venues, in a time slot which is most prone to having games getting affected, or essentially abandoned due to rain. On the flip side, England is well poised to hosting Australia for yet another Ashes later in the year completely exhibiting the direction of their cricketing priorities and where they stand when it comes to the importance of a World Cup vis-à-vis an Ashes event.

The latter accusation isn’t even something that I have just thrown out for the sake of having a go at the ICC, rather the events which (they all so conveniently mark as an act of God) actually has some statistical relevance to it — In short the ECB and the ICC both forgot on ‘how to Math’ before scheduling the biggest cricketing event globally.

Although I have to admit that the extent of my geography limits to whatever I might’ve studied in my A’ levels however common sense (which cricket administrators, unfortunately, lack in abundance) dictates, that rainfall and weather do not change overnight and in light of such an inference I have gathered data sets ranging from nearly a decade.

In the latter two computations, I took games that were called off due to rain after the teams took to the ground, nomenclature-d as ‘no result’ while for the games that got totally abandoned without a ball being bowled we will resort to calling them as ‘abandoned’. From 10 Jun 2009 until the washout between West Indies and South Africa at Southampton, the most number of ‘no-results’ rain-affected games came in the month of June with England copping 50% of those matches. Subsequently, if we distribute the months based on the block of May-July then England champions the chart by having a contribution percentage of 39% for all rain affected no-result matches which is nearly 17% higher than the next country in the inference.

In addition to the preceding miserable statistics, it boggles the mind on why didn’t the ICC and the English Cricket Board schedule the World Cup in the Block of Aug-Oct as during the entire last decade, England have hosted 94 ODIs in this particular block with only 3 games getting affected by rain. Yet knowingly (or unknowingly, which wouldn’t be surprising at all) the ICC and the ECB decided to put the Ashes in the block of Aug to Sep and have the biggest cricketing event in a timeslot where matches in England have a historically higher chance of getting rained out.

England also has induced a fair amount of abandoned games as well which post-2004 do not showcase in the official record books. If we look at the total number of such abandoned games England once again features as one of the most potentially rain trodden avenues for playing cricket, especially in the block of May to July.

The most hilarious bit simply lies in the fact that an abandoned game actually hurts the broadcasters and the ICC more so than if they simply go out and try to accommodate these fixtures on a reserve day. Ad revenue is generally charged based on prime time broadcast of a sporting event and if there is no sporting event (as in the case of an abandoned fixture) ICC and the English Cricket Board (via proxy) are effectively losing out on such revenue.

Flexibility and common sense is also something which needs to be ingrained into match officials as well. The recent abandoned game between Pakistan and Sri Lanka had a mid-summer sunshine out on the field yet, the Umpires decided to walk away claiming that by the time the game was to be potentially resumed, it would’ve been 10 mins over the cut off time for a minimalistic T20 game. These small attributions along with policies such as not covering the entire ground are the self-inflicted wounds which only make the game poorer and drives away anyone who might be remotely interested in cricket.

Finally, it can be said that as of right now the Rain Gods may not be happy with the cricketing fraternity, however with the dumbfounded administrative policies of the ICC I won’t be surprised if Zeus himself invokes a Pandora’s Apocalypse and files for a Money Back on the sheer stupidity of the human race administering the great game of cricket.