Why did the umpires call off play when Tamil Nadu were just 36 runs away in 4 possible overs?

What does the playing conditions say about bad light that dictated the umpires's call?

Vijay Shankar, Dhruv Shorey, Manish Pandey and Govinda Poddar scored centuries on the 3rd Day of Ranji Trophy Round 5 matches. (BCCI Domestic/Twitter)

Written by: Venkata Krishna B

4 min readDec 17, 2022 07:13 AM IST First published on: Dec 16, 2022 at 06:40 PM IST

When the last wicket of Hyderabad fell in the second innings against Tamil Nadu, little did anyone expect a sensational end to the Round 1 of Ranji Trophy fixtures. For Tamil Nadu to get a win, they needed to chase 144 in 11 overs and when the openers Sai Sudharsan and N Jagadeesan were put 93 runs in six overs, a victory against all odds seemed a possibility, but only for the umpires to call off the play an over later citing bad light with Tamil Nadu stranded on 108 for 1.

The beginning

When Day Four got underway at the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium, the chances of an outright win for Tamil Nadu seemed a long shot. The pitch remained placid and as Hyderabad batted into the final session, Tamil Nadu’s hopes were fading.

Challenge accepted

With the game already entering the mandatory overs stage (teams can settle for a draw if a result is not possible to achieve in the last hour), all eyes were on TN whether they accepted the challenge to chase the target or not. Given their batting riches, they took on the challenge and in the seven overs they faced they hit 13 sixes. Basically, they had switched to T20 mode, looking to get the job done through boundaries and sixes.

N Jagadeesan and Sai Sudharsan in the middle during day four of the Tamil Nadu-Hyderabad Ranji match. (BCCI Domestic/Twitter)

Slowing the game

Even though Sudharsan was dismissed first ball of the seventh over for 42 (20b), N Jagadeesan was still going strong. But, Hyderabad knowing that bad light would come to their rescue, slowed down the game, pushing all their fielders to the boundary rope. Their captain Tanmay Agarwal too wasted plenty of time by walking down from long-off to the bowler for each ball. And even when the ball flew into the stands, Hyderabad fielders took time to fetch the ball back, forcing TN to send their players into the stands as cover.

Umpire’s have final say

While teams usually resort to such time wasting tactics, umpires also tend to make up for the lost time. But in this case, the umpires had no choice but to call off play because they had to go by what the light metre says.

Why is it so?

There are two factors here. If the light metre was used in the game for the first time on Day 4, they could have asked the Hyderabad team whether they are interested in continuing with a spinner. However, that didn’t happen here.

Why? The reason being as early as Day 1, the umpires had used the light metre and reading metric will be used for the remaining days as well. For example, if the light metre reading had shown 4.1 on Day 1, they have to stick to it through the course of the game.

Usually umpires take a reading when fast bowlers are operating and spinners are operating. If the conditions are conducive for spinners to operate and the fielding captain agrees to bowl spin from both the ends, umpires will carry on with the game. If the captain says no, they have no choice but to call off the play.